Like many dead technologies before it, from Betamax to VHS, text messages were once a useful tool, even an essential one. While our phones are still capable of using an SMS facility and, in fact, devices like the revamped Nokia 3310 have attempted to re-orient the mobile device around short messages, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that texting is increasingly a thing of the past.
A Very Public Kicking
Having said that, as a social tool, it was perhaps inevitable that SMS functions might see the light again, especially as platforms like Facebook and Twitter have taken a very public kicking lately, driving people towards alternative ways of doing things. In fact, it can be quite difficult to find something online that doesn’t have social capabilities. Even the humble chatroom has been resurrected on sites like Chatterbox UK.
More analogue hobbies such as roulette have seen a social renaissance too, partly due to the live roulette at Paddy Power. This entertainment site has made an effort to reunite the game of roulette with the atmosphere of the offline casino, adding chat options and a live dealer on camera. For developers seeking to attract a younger, more socially-invested crowd, chat functions can seem like a no-brainer.
Of course, most of these options make use of text in some way or another but SMS, a technology based solely on letters and numbers, might seem like an extreme solution to a simple problem. A Wired article from 2014 entitled The Challenges and Future of SMS Technology lamented the fact that texting was “hard” – so what kind of state can SMS really be in today?
Ashton Kutcher
The good news for texters is that sending messages is still quite a popular thing, with just under one in three people using the service every day, according to an Independent article that cites comms company Infobip. Half of the people who answered in the affirmative used text messaging to contact people who had no presence on other platforms, such as social media or a service like Whatsapp.
Oddly enough, the pursuit of more text messaging actually has a number of Hollywood fans, including Ashton Kutcher. The A-lister and entrepreneur helped create the start-up Community in 2019. Then known as Shimmur, Community is a means for fans to keep up with their favourite celebrities via text message. There’s a bit more to it than that but, at its basic level, Community uses phone numbers instead of usernames.
Community is ostensibly trying to leverage the fact that almost all (90%, according to an Adobe study) text messages are read within three seconds. However, this might have something to do with the fact that they’re about as unusual today as an Emergency Alert and, therefore, demand attention. Whether this novelty can last is debatable, especially as scams are usually delivered by SMS too.
For now, as social media isn’t going anywhere (yes, Facebook is in decline but TikTok is booming), it’s likely that text messages will remain a last-resort option for the majority of mobile users. Still, it’ll be interesting to see if such a dated, even disliked, format can actually make a return.
