IM Abbreviations Gain In Business

Want further proof that instant messaging is becoming an integral part of business culture? Look no further than a survey corporate IM vendor Omnipod conducted recently to find out what kinds of abbreviations are gaining steam among business IM users.

When IM first burst onto the consumer scene in the late 1990s, thanks mostly to rampant use by teenagers, abbreviations such as LOL (laugh out loud) entered the pop culture vernacular. Not surprisingly, it turns out business users are taking the creation of new abbreviations in new directions, even developing a standard term for trashing supervisors. Omnipod this week shared results of a survey of 1,500 users of its desktop business IM tool, ranking the 10 most commonly used abbreviations in the workplace.

While a few of those on the list are probably considered old-school by now, several have been rising over the past several months.

The top 10 IM abbreviations based on the Omnipod survey:

1) BRB (be right back)

2) CTRN (can't talk right now)

3) IMO (in my opinion)

4) HTH (hope this--or that--helps)

5) IAM (in a meeting)

6) WFM (works for me)

7) BFO (blinding flash of the obvious)

8) DHTB (don't have the bandwidth)

9) IHMB (I hate my boss)

10) SLAP (sounds like a plan)