A paper about IM and MSN messenger in the french newspaper Le Monde. They report that :

If your had to keep just two media, which one would you choose? 12-15 years old answered: Internet (61 %), television (49 %), cinema (35 %), radio (29 %), daily press (17 %) and magazines (9 %). (...) In France, between may 2003 and december 2004, the number of MSN messenger users went from 2.7 to 6.8 millions (from all ages).

. Besides, the paper quote the work of Anne Cohen-Kiel, the design anthropologist for MSN. Which is interesting because it is not so often that french press describes user-oriented design techniques like the collaboration of software designers with anthropologists.