Study Finds 10 Most Common IM Acronyms

Make any sense to you? Maybe not, but to the modern-day office worker, wired to other coworkers (and often times friends) through instant messaging (IM), this sequence of seemingly meaningless letters actually means a great deal.

In a survey by Omnipod of 2,000 of its end users, these were some of the most commonly used office acronyms over IM. In order, the top ten are:

1. NP No Problem
2. JK Just Kidding
3. LMAO Laughing My #$% Off
4. CB Call Back
5. TTYL Talk To You Later
6. WTG Way To Go!
7. NCIH No Chance In Hell
8. DHT$ Don’t Have The Funds
9. WRUV4 Who Are You Voting For?
10. RFL? Ready For Lunch?

The survey also found that IM is increasingly common in the workforce, with 85% of all US enterprises using the program for office communications or personal use. Twenty percent of all enterprise users use IM today, with the number expected to grow to 80% by 2008.

“This is our second annual survey and it is interesting to see how IM slang evolves year after year.” observed Gideon Stein, CEO of Omnipod, in a press release. “This being an election year I wasn’t surprised to see something election oriented in the top 10. Not surprisingly, ‘WRUV4’ (who are you voting for) dropped off completely after November 3rd.”

Acronyms used in regular speech were not included in the survey, according to Omnipod. All participants were members of Omnipod’s On Demand Private IM solution. Omnipod provides a centrally controlled communications platform built on IM technology.