AOL released its third annual “Instant Messaging Trends” report, and to no one’s surprise (well, at least for those who have a teenager at home), Instant Messaging usage is up 19 percent over last year. Some 38 percent of users say they send as many or more IMs than emails, and the younger users are, the more likely they are to favor IM. About 66 percent of teens and young adults (ages 13-21) say they send more IMs than emails, up from 49 percent last year.

One thing should be clear to media companies: IM will be an increasingly popular platform for the delivery of rich media. With its inherent capability to virally share content, an increasing number of TV networks and film studies will join record labels in taking advantage of consumer-driven networks as a distribution path. According to the trend report, 26 percent of IM users say that live streaming television is the one feature they wish was available on their IM service. Music on demand came in second with 25 percent and video on demand was third with 21 percent.

Along the same thread, Fox is beginning to take full advantage of its recent Myspace.com acquisition. Fox is “Webcasting” an unseen episode of its program “Kitchen Confidential” to the more than 36 million Mysapce.com users through mid-November. The network is tossing in a contest where answering trivia questions about the show can net a $100 Amex gift check. It will be interesting to see what impact the event has on the show’s all important November sweeps ratings.