LOL, what a tangled Web we weave: Strategies for coherence in instant messaging discourse

Instant messaging (IM), a form of quasi-synchronous communication over the Internet, is a popular medium, with over 69 million reported users in the US, and over 82 million in Europe. 3 Speaking broadly of online discourse genres, IM is most clearly related to Internet chat, in which multiple users send messages in real time to a central location, where they are displayed for all those ‘logged in’ to see. IM, however, differs in several important ways from the chatroom: IM is generally bilateral, involving no more than two users, while chatrooms can have any number of conversational participants engaged in conversation, and secondly, IM is often conducted between people who are friends or acquaintances in real life, or long-term online contacts, whereas public chatrooms are, generally speaking, anonymous, featuring a transient cast of temporary and infrequent visitors along with chatroom regulars. 4 Section 2 includes a more comprehensive account of the proper characterization of IM.