Some may feel that technology has gone too far, especially when it comes to communication, offering hundreds of ways to easily communicate at a very fast rate – what effect is this having on our cultural and personal relationships. No one could imagine how to live without these innovative ways to communicate and connect. An example of this is text messaging, started in the late 90’s and grown rapidly ever since. Text messaging enables a phone user to send short messages ranging from one hundred sixty characters and above using their mobile phone, good enough to say something in a brief and concise way. The best thing about text messaging is mobility, a phone user can send short messages or text at any place where mobile phone signals are abundantly available. It’s great to be able to communicate readily with our friends and family and also to have a mobile for any emergencies that might occur. But some older members of the community are concerned about what they feel is the negative impact on our spoken language.
Many people, young and old alike have made texting part of their daily lives because of the fast interactions between mobile phone users. Technologies were developed to improve texting and make it more useful and interactive one example is MMS or multimedia messaging that not only enables the user to send short messages but also allows you to send images and short video clips and sounds along with the messages.
Every silver lining has a dark cloud! Sending a message using your phone may not show the emotions attached to the language compared to other medium of communication for it only allows a person to write messages in a very limited number of characters (of course, the same limitation exists for emails as well). This effect is further impacted as many mobile users also use shortcuts instead of using the whole word for texting. This way of messaging may cause a user to use language in a lazy manner. However, mobile phone manufacturers have lessened this impact with text prediction which suggests words correctly spelt as a user is typing in the relevant word.
Text Messaging in Business
Text messaging also plays its role in the business world. Many marketing strategies involve text messaging as part of campaigns for many different types of companies. Some Companies collaborate with Telecommunication Companies to advertise their products and services by sending out free adverts to millions of subscribers, this strategy has been very successful for a large number of organisations. Since the penetration of mobile phones has reached astounding numbers this is hardly surprising. There are more mobile phones than televisions or cars on the planet. In addition, users have their mobiles with them 24/7and are constantly checking them throughout the day.
Many companies that offer consumer products use text messaging for their promos, and include raffles, competitions and surveys. A phone user is required to register and send a code found on their products to qualify for the companies offer; and of course they provide prizes. The irony is that using text messaging in this way helps to increase the demand of their products. Though there are many ways available to advertise and promote services and products through the use of internet, text messaging is beginning to gain major leverage its use can still provide amazing results to businesses who wants to test mobile marketing.
