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Saturday, June 11, 2011

Texting Out, Skype In?

I like to text. Short, sweet, to the point. And minimal time involved. But as the above article states, texting is not as popular as before. "Experts said that the rise of broadband Internet meant the end of SMS as consumers could use it to send messages for free." I'm not sure I agree with the assessment.

Certainly the rate of growth has slowed but that typically happens as a product or service becomes ubiquitous. But texting is still growing. Wireless industry trade group CTIA found that in the last six months of last year one trillion texts were sent in the U.S. - but that was the smallest gain since a decade ago." Yet, texting still remains a useful tool for communication.

Still, the web has given rise to other communication tools and each will find their useful niche depending on the level or intimacy of communication needed. Skype
will also grow, especially as smartphones enable mobile video communication. And as far as texting not being cool; perhaps not, but always useful.

1 comment:

  1. Everyone you know with a cell phone can receive and send SMS messages, regardless of carrier, regardless of how cheap or expensive their phone.

    And people will default to SMS because it's their one-stop messaging platform. iChat or Google Talk or Skype might cut into that a bit, but you have to not only have a phone that supports them, you need your friends to be using them as well. If not... back to SMS because it's the "lingua franca" of messaging.

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