Research Article
GroupBanter: Supporting Serendipitous Group Conversations with IM
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-642-03354-4_37, author={Kori Inkpen and Steve Whittaker and Mary Czerwinski and Roland Fernandez and James Wallace}, title={GroupBanter: Supporting Serendipitous Group Conversations with IM}, proceedings={Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing. 4th International Conference, CollaborateCom 2008, Orlando, FL, USA, November 13-16, 2008, Revised Selected Papers}, proceedings_a={COLLABORATECOM}, year={2012}, month={5}, keywords={Instant messaging (IM) chat group conversations Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Computer supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)}, doi={10.1007/978-3-642-03354-4_37} }- Kori Inkpen
Steve Whittaker
Mary Czerwinski
Roland Fernandez
James Wallace
Year: 2012
GroupBanter: Supporting Serendipitous Group Conversations with IM
COLLABORATECOM
Springer
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-03354-4_37
Abstract
This paper describes GroupBanter, a tool for supporting serendipitous group conversations using instant messaging. We investigated the potential of ephemeral group conversations by providing awareness of friends’ IM conversations, serving as an implicit invitation to join a group conversation. We present our vision and describe our prototype system. Results from two field studies carried out in different contexts show that users valued GroupBanter and that it provided new opportunities for communication that aren’t well served by traditional IM, email, or face-to-face communication. Our results indicate there is potential in providing a lightweight communication channel that lies between traditional, private IM conversations and more public IRC-like conversations.