Integrating Topic-centric Thread-based Organized Chat into Web-based Enterprise Instant Messengers

IM (Instant Messenger) offers real-time interactivity between two or more geographically dispersed parties through the exchange of text or multimedia messages. In IM conversations, people feel emancipated to express their ideas or views. However, such a free and casual style of dialogue could form dissimilar views and may even cause confusions among individuals, making it unsuitable to be used in corporate environments, particularly for conducting group online meetings that involve multiple parties and span a variety of topics. This paper presents a solution of integrating topic-centric thread-based organized chat into enterprise instant messengers, with which multiple users can participate in diverse topics simultaneously for a large interactive business meeting over the Internet. This solution has been implemented in a prototype system and preliminary usability testing has shown that it is effective to support simultaneous group conversations.