IM: How do you use yours?

A lot is being written currently about instant messaging (IM) - and in general it's not all good.

Last week IM was blamed for being a source of pornography, bad language and general cyber-loafing within the workplace, suggesting it is doing little to improve working efficiency but doing a lot to give bosses and HR departments an added headache.

But is this fair, can IM improve efficiencies within the office and is it picking up a lot of the slack left by email systems which are performing well below par due to the problems of spam, viruses and general inbox overload?

silicon.com is launching a Special Report on the subject of IM and we want to know all about how you use it, if you use it, why you use it and what for. If you don't use IM at work we want to know why.

Take our survey now and let us make our coverage specific to your experiences.

We want to know about corporate policies and the issues surrounding workplace use of IM and we want to know how much a part of your working day it has now become.

So give just 20 seconds of your time and take our very quick survey.