>> Greetings and goodbyes are much more common in female-female conversations than male-male conversations, but in mixed gender conversations, males would use conversations openers and closers more frequently than when just talking to males. Greetings were used 80% of the time, and conversations ended with a goodbye 65% of the time. The graph below demonstrates the percentage of times that greetings are seen in the different types of IM conversations.

>> Additionally, males who rarely use emoticons or smileys when speaking with other males use more emoticons and smileys when conversing with females. In general, males will use around 21 smileys every 40 lines of text when speaking to a female, as opposed to 9 when speaking to a male, and females will use about 35.

>> Topics discussed became less gender specific and dealt with subjects such as movies, school, books, and other common interests. Small talk made up 35% of the content, movies 15%, school 17%, and books 20%, with the remaining 13% consisting of other common interests or acquaintances

>> The tone of these exchanges was also more balanced, being more teasing than female-female conversations, but not as derogatory as male-male conversations. Friendly banter, punctuated with the use of various smileys, creates a tone generally not found in same-sex conversations but apparent in at least two-thirds of male-female exchanges.