The Research Of Users' Requirements Of Instant Messenger

The object of this dissertation is finding out the requirements of the users who use Instantmessenger (IM). Theories in communication and message technology field were adoptedto investigate how people think and use this web based communication tool. Sociology,Technology and psychology view points would be combining to discuss this issue andexaim relative communication theories need be modified or not.Innovation diffusion theory was taking as the background of this survey; through it we can seehow the environment effect people adopt new technology in such a complex cyber word.Personal requirements in this procedure were key points we also care about and uses andgratification theory provides the frame to investigation. Technology adopting model wasused as the bridge to combine these two dimensions. According to thesetheories, this survey uses several factors to formulate research structure,including: People requirements, IM use behaviors, attitudes of IM using, IMuse gratification.Online Questioner that formed by recent IM survey and modified is designed to get data.Through the snowball rolling method, data were gathered from 9 major cities in China,and 946 valid responds were adopted in this survey. Focus group was taking as theassistant to integrative opinions from IM users before formal quest ioner build. Thisresearch use ANOVA, Factor analysis, correlation analysis, and dataregression conduct data. After data analysis, another Focus group was heldto find out the reasons of data analysis result. This survey gets result aslist:1. IM user' s requirements were divided into two factors: Personal emotiondiffusion and identification, Daily message exchange. IM user' s attitudewas divided into three factors" reliable communicate channel, instantemotion express tool, Daily message gathering tool.2. When people recognize that there are more than 66 friends use IM, criticalmass effect will appear. IM will soon be adopted by future users.3. If no other soft wears provides similar function as IM, people willingpay for advance reasonal functions by 11. 24RMB, and 10. IRMB for advanceemotional functions.4. Requirements would not due to IM use gratification and attitude is. uses and gratification theory needs to modify.