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Text messaging, or texting is the common term for the sending of "short" (originally 160 characters or fewer, including spaces) text messages from mobile phones using the Short Message Service (SMS). It is available on most digital mobile phones and some personal digital assistants with on-board wireless telecommunications. The individual messages which are sent are called text messages or, more colloquially, texts or SMS.
SMS gateways connect mobile SMS services with any online service that is able to connect with the gateway, e.g.
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Encyclopedia
enV.]]
Text messaging, or texting is the common term for the sending of "short" (originally 160 characters or fewer, including spaces) text messages from mobile phones using the Short Message Service (SMS). It is available on most digital mobile phones and some personal digital assistants with on-board wireless telecommunications. The individual messages which are sent are called text messages or, more colloquially, texts or SMS.
SMS gateways connect mobile SMS services with any online service that is able to connect with the gateway, e.g. instant message (IM) services, the world wide web, desktop computers, and landline telephones (through speech synthesis). Devices that connect to mobile phones and PDAs through protocols such as Bluetooth may use the same type of link to send SMS messages over a wireless network. SMS arose as part of the widely deployed GSM protocol, but is now also available with non-GSM systems.
The most common application of the service is person-to-person messaging, but text messages are also often used to interact with automated systems, such as ordering products and services for mobile phones, or participating in contests. There are some services available on the Internet that allow users to send text messages free of direct charge to the sender.
History
Many companies have claimed to have sent the very first text message, but according to a former employee of NASA, Edward Lantz, the first was sent via 7,000,000 simple 2015 Motorola beeper in 1989 by Raina Fortini from New York City to Melbourne Beach, Florida using upside down numbers that could be read as words and sounds. The first SMS typed on a GSM phone is claimed to have been sent by Riku Pihkonen, an engineer student at Nokia, in 1993.
Initial growth of text messaging was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4 messages per GSM customer per month. One factor in the slow take-up of SMS was that operators were slow to set up charging systems, especially for prepaid subscribers, and eliminate billing fraud which was possible by changing SMSC settings on individual handsets to use the SMSCs of other operators. Over time, this issue was eliminated by switch-billing instead of billing at the SMSC and by new features within SMSCs to allow blocking of foreign mobile users sending messages through it. By the end of 2000, the average number of messages per user reached 35.
The first web text messaging portal was invented in Doncaster, Japan by Hung Fui. Beta tested in 1994 and launched in 1996/1997 it offer three sms from mobile phones to email or via a web portal. It also offered the first commercial advertising service, sending 20,000 SMS's per month with servers in China and Australia.
SMS was originally designed as part of GSM, but is now available on a wide range of networks, including 3G networks. However, not all text messaging systems use SMS, and some notable alternate implementations of the concept include J-Phone's "SkyMail" and NTT Docomo's "Short Mail", both in Japan. E-mail messaging from phones, as popularized by NTT Docomo's i-mode and the RIM BlackBerry, also typically use standard mail protocols such as SMTP over TCP/IP.
Today text messaging is the most widely used mobile data service, with 35% of all mobile phone users worldwide or 4.2 Million out of 7.3 Million phone subscribers at end of 2003 being active users of the Short Message Service (SMS). In countries like Finland, Sweden and Norway over 72% of the population use SMS. The European average is about 85% and North America is rapidly catching up with over 40% active users of SMS by end of 2006. The largest average usage of the service by mobile phone subscribers is in the Philippines with an average of 15 texts sent per day by subscriber. In Singapore the average is 12 and in South Korea 10.
Text messaging was reported to have addictive tendencies by the Global Messaging Survey by Nokia in 2001 and was confirmed to be addictive by the study at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium in 2004. Since then the study at the University of Queensland in Australia has found that text messaging is the most addictive digital service on mobile or internet, and is equivalent in addictiveness to cigarette smoking. The text reception habit introduces a need to remain connected, called "Reachability". In the 2000s, the term thumb wrestling has been used to describe verbal fighting using text messaging on cellular phones. In January 2009, a teenage girl set a record high of 14,528 text messages in a one month period.
Text Messaging Gateway Providers
SMS gateway providers facilitate the SMS traffic between businesses and mobile subscribers, being mainly responsible for carrying mission-critical messages, SMS for enterprises, content delivery and entertainment services involving SMS, e.g. TV voting. Considering SMS messaging performance and cost, as well as the level of text messaging services, SMS gateway providers can be classified as the cell phone aggregators or SS7 providers.
SMS messaging gateway providers can provide gateway-to-mobile (Mobile Terminated – MT) services. Some suppliers can also supply mobile-to-gateway (text-in or Mobile Originated/MO services). Many operate text-in services on shortcodes or mobile number ranges, whereas others use lower-cost geographic text-in numbers .
On traditional phones such as the older Nokia range, the default tone to alert the phone user of an SMS was A series of beeps: "dit dit dit dah dah dit dit dit", which is is fact Morse code for "SMS".
Premium content
SMS is widely used for delivering digital content such as news alerts, financial information, logos and ringtones. Such messages are also known as premium-rated short messages (PSMS). The subscribers are charged extra for receiving this premium content, and the amount is typically divided between the mobile network operator and the value added service provider (VASP) either through revenue share or a fixed transport fee. Services like 82ASK and Any Question Answered have used the PSMS model to enable rapid response to mobile consumers' questions, using on-call teams of experts and researchers.
Premium short messages are increasingly being used for "real-world" services. For example, some vending machines now allow payment by sending a premium-rated short message, so that the cost of the item bought is added to the user's phone bill or subtracted from the user's prepaid credits. Recently, premium messaging companies have come under fire from consumer groups due to a large number of consumers racking up huge phone bills. Some mobile networks, now require users to call their provider to enable premium messages to reach their handset.
A new type of 'free premium' or 'hybrid premium' content has emerged with the launch of text-service websites. These sites allow registered users to receive free text messages when items they are interested go on sale, or when new items are introduced.
An alternative to inbound SMS is based on Long numbers (international mobile number format, e.g., +44 7624 805000 or geographic numbers which can handle voice and SMS eg 01133203040), which can be used in place of short codes / premium-rated short messages for SMS reception in several applications, such as TV voting, product promotions and campaigns. Long numbers are internationally available, as well as enabling businesses to have their own number, rather than short codes which are usually shared across a lot of brands. Additionally, Long numbers are non-premium inbound numbers.
Popularity
Short message services are developing very rapidly throughout the world. In 2000, just 17 billion SMS messages were sent; in 2001, the number was up to 250 billion, and 500 billion SMS messages in 2004. At an average cost of USD 0.10 per message, this generates revenues in excess of $50 billion for mobile telephone operators and represents close to 100 text messages for every person in the world.
However, the world has become more and more addicted to communicating mobily. There has been numerous reports of teenagers going on rampaging sprees because their parents ground them from their cell phone. Also, it has been a known risk that cell phone users will spend their money on their cell phone rather than the basic nesecities.
SMS is particularly popular in Europe, Asia (excluding Japan; see below), Australia and New Zealand. Popularity has grown to a sufficient extent that the term texting (used as a verb meaning the act of mobile phone users sending short messages back and forth) has entered the common lexicon.
In China, SMS is very popular, and has brought service providers significant profit (18 billion short messages were sent in 2001). It is a very influential and powerful tool in the Philippines, where the average user sends 10-12 text messages a day. The Philippines alone sends on the average 400 million text messages a day or approximately 142 billion text messages sent a year, more than the annual average SMS volume of the countries in Europe, and even China and India. It is said that the Philippines is the texting capital of the world. SMS is hugely popular in India, where youngsters often exchange lots of text messages, and companies provide alerts, infotainment, news, cricket scores update, railway/airline booking, mobile billing, and banking services on SMS.
In 2001, text messaging played an important role in deposing former Philippine president Joseph Estrada. Similarly, in 2008, text messaging played a primary role in the implication of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in an SMS sex scandal.
Short messages are particularly popular amongst young urbanites. In many markets, the service is comparatively cheap. For example, in Australia a message typically costs between AUD 0.20 and AUD 0.25 to send (some pre-paid services charge AUD 0.01 between their own phones), compared with a voice call, which costs somewhere between AUD 0.40 and AUD 2.00 per minute (commonly charged in half-minute blocks). Despite the low cost to the consumer, the service is enormously profitable to the service providers. At a typical length of only 190 bytes (incl. protocol overhead), more than 350 of these messages per minute can be transmitted at the same data rate as a usual voice call (9 kbit/s).
Mobile Service Providers in New Zealand, such as Vodafone and Boost Mobile, provide up to 2000 SMS messages for NZ$10 per month. Users on these plans send on average 1500 SMS messages every month.
Text messaging has become so popular that advertising agencies and advertisers are now jumping into the text message business. Services that provide bulk text message sending are also becoming a popular way for clubs, associations, and advertisers to quickly reach a group of opt-in subscribers. This advertising has proven to be extremely effective, but some insiders worry that advertisers may abuse the power of mobile marketing and it will someday be considered spam.
Europe
between countries. Here, T-Mobile welcomes a Proximus subscriber to the UK and BASE welcomes an Orange UK customer to Belgium.]]
Europe follows next behind Asia in terms of the popularity of the use of SMS. In 2003, an average of 16 billion messages were sent each month. Users in Spain sent a little more than fifty messages per month on average in 2003. In Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom the figure was around 35–40 SMS messages per month. In each of these countries the cost of sending an SMS message varies from as little as €0.04–€0.23 depending on the payment plan (with many contractual plans including all or a number of texts for free). Curiously France has not taken to SMS in the same way, sending just under 20 messages on average per user per month. France has the same GSM technology as other European countries so the uptake is not hampered by technical restrictions.
In the Republic of Ireland, a total of 1.5 billion messages are sent every quarter, on average 114 messages per person per month. Whilst in the United Kingdom over 1 billion text messages are sent every week.
The Eurovision Song Contest organized the first pan-European SMS-voting in 2002, as a part of the voting system (there was also a voting over traditional phone lines). In 2005, the Eurovision Song Contest organized the biggest televoting ever (with SMS and phone voting).
During roaming, that is when a user connects to another network in different country than his own, the prices are much higher, usually €0.25- €0.50 in Europe. Still, SMS is very popular during trips, since calling is also much more expensive than usual. In July 2008, the EU decided to introduce legislation that limits this price to €0.11.
United States
In the United States, text messaging is also popular; as reported by CTIA, the average number of text messages sent per subscriber per month was 188. In the US, SMS is often charged both at the sender and at the destination, but, unlike phone calls, it cannot be rejected or dismissed. The reasons for this are varied—many users have unlimited "mobile-to-mobile" minutes, high monthly minute allotments, or unlimited service. Moreover, push to talk services offer the instant connectivity of SMS and are typically unlimited. Furthermore, the integration between competing providers and technologies necessary for cross-network text messaging has only been available recently. Some providers originally charged extra to enable use of text, further reducing its usefulness and appeal. The relative popularity of e-mail-based devices such as the BlackBerry in North America may be a response to the weakness of text messaging there, but these further weaken the appeal of texting among the users most likely to use it. However, the addition of AT&T-powered SMS voting on the television program American Idol has introduced many Americans to SMS, and usage is on the rise. In the third quarter of 2006, at least 12 billion text messages crossed AT&T's network, up almost 15 percent from the preceding quarter.
In the United States, while texting is widely popular among the ages of 13–22 years old, it is increasing among adults and business users as well. The age that a child receives their first cell phone has also decreased, making text messaging a very popular way of communication for all ages. According to both the Mobile Marketing Association and Pew Internet & American Life Project Surveys, 40% of US Mobile phone users text. The split by age group is as follows: 13-27's: 82% text, 15-37's 73% text, 28-39's:
44% text, 40-49's: 18% text. The amount of texts being sent in the United States has gone up over the years as the price has gone down to an average of $0.10 per text sent and received. Many providers also will make unlimited texting available for a lower price.
In order to convince more customers to include text messaging plans some major cell phone providers have recently increased the price to send and receive text messages from 15¢ to 20¢ per message. This is over $1,300 per megabyte.
Finland
In addition to SMS voting, a different phenomenon has risen in more mobile-phone-saturated countries. In Finland some TV channels began "SMS chat", which involved sending short messages to a phone number, and the messages would be shown on TV a while later. Chats are always moderated, which prevents sending harmful material to the channel. The craze soon became popular and evolved into games, first slow-paced quiz and strategy games. After a while, faster paced games were designed for television and SMS control. Games tend to involve registering one's nickname, and after that sending short messages for controlling a character on screen. Messages usually cost 0.05 to 0.86 Euro apiece, and games can require the player to send dozens of messages. In December 2003, a Finnish TV-channel, MTV3, put a Santa character on air reading aloud messages sent in by viewers. On March 12 2004, the first entirely "interactive" TV-channel "VIISI" began operation in Finland. That did not last long though, as SBS Finland Oy took over the channel and turned it into a music channel named "The Voice" in November 2004.
In 2006, the Prime Minister of Finland, Matti Vanhanen, made front page news when he allegedly broke up with his girlfriend with a text message.
In 2007, the first text message only book, which is about a business executive who travels throughout Europe and India, was published by a Finnish author.
Mobile service providers in Finland offer contracts where you can send 1000 text messages a month for the price of €10.
Japan
Japan was among the first countries to widely adopt short messages, with pioneering non-GSM services including J-Phone's "SkyMail" and NTT Docomo's "Short Mail". Japanese adolescents first began text messaging because it was a cheaper form of communication than the other available forms. Thus, Japanese theorists created the selective interpersonal relationship theory, claiming that mobile phones can change social networks among young people (classified as 13-30-year olds). They theorized this age group had extensive, but low-quality relationships with friends, and mobile phone usage may facilitate improvement in the quality of their relationships. They concluded this age group prefers “selective interpersonal relationships in which they maintain particular, partial, but rich relations, depending on the situation”. The same studied showed participants rated friendships in which they communicated via both FtF and mobile/cell phone text message (MPTM) as being more intimate than those in which they communicated solely via FtF. This indicates participants make new relationships with FtF communication at an early stage, but use MPTM to increase their contact later on. It is also interesting to note that as the relationships between participants grew more intimate in FtF, the frequency of MPTM also increased.
However, short messaging has been largely rendered obsolete by the prevalence of mobile Internet e-mail, which can be sent to and received from any e-mail address, mobile or otherwise. That said, while usually presented to the user simply as a uniform "mail" service (and most users are unaware of the distinction), the operators may still internally transmit the content as short messages, especially if the destination is on the same network.
Philippines
On onset of SMS services in the Philippines, GSM networks Islacom and Globe Telecom gave unlimited SMS services for 150 pesos a month until 2001. Because the service is affordable, and GSM service is starting to pick up on other countries, the Philippines became known as the ‘text capital of the world’. SMS traffic has fast become a burden on these networks thus, they sought to charge subscribers 1 pesos per SMS. Public outrage soon followed leading to establishment of activist groups, nevertheless, the public are able to cope up with the costs. ‘Presently each mobile phone user in the Philippines is sending out at least 10 text messages a day compared to about 3 text messages per user in the United Kingdom (Pertierra 2005a; cf. Ling 2004). About one Filipino in two is a subscriber to a mobile phone service.
At the end of 2007 four of the top mobile phone service providers in the country stated there are 42.78 million mobile phone subscribers in the Philippines
Morse code
A few widely publicised speed contests have been held between expert Morse code operators and expert SMS users. Several mobile phones have Morse code ring tones and alert messages. For example, many Nokia mobile phones have an option to beep "S M S" in Morse code when it receives a short message. Some of these phones could also play the Nokia slogan "Connecting people" in Morse code as a message tone. There are third-party applications available for some mobile phones that allow Morse input for short messages.
Spam
In 2002, an increasing trend towards spamming mobile phone users through SMS prompted cellular service carriers to take steps against the practice, before it became a widespread problem. No major spamming incidents involving SMS had been reported , but the existence of mobile-phone spam has been noted by industry watchdogs, including Consumer Reports magazine and the Utility Consumers' Action Network (). In 2005, UCAN brought a case against Sprint for spamming its customers and charging $0.10 per text message. The case was settled in 2006 with Sprint agreeing not to send customers Sprint advertisements via SMS.
SMS expert Acision (used to be LogicaCMG Telecoms) reported a new type of SMS-malice at the end of 2006, noting the first instances of SMiShing (a cousin to email phishing scams). In SMiShing, users receive SMS messages posing to be from a company, enticing users to phone premium rate numbers, or reply with personal information.
Text speak
The small phone keypad caused a number of adaptations of spelling, as in the phrase "txt msg", or use of CamelCase, such as in "ThisIsVeryLame". To avoid the even more limited message lengths allowed when using Cyrillic or Greek letters, speakers of languages written in those alphabets often use the Latin alphabet for their own language. Some of the most common included lol (laugh out loud), wtf? (what the fuck?), roflmao (roll on the floor laughing my ass off), and omg (Oh my God).
Historically, this language developed out of shorthand used in Bulletin Board Systems and later in internet chatrooms, where users would abbreviate some words to allow a response to be typed more quickly, though the amount of time saved is often inconsequential. However, this became much more pronounced in SMS, where mobile phone users don't generally have access to a QWERTY keyboard as computer users did, more effort is required to type each character, and there is a limit on the number of characters that may be sent.
In Mandarin Chinese, numbers that sound similar to words are used in place of those words. For example, the numbers 520 in Chinese ("wu er ling") sound like the words for "I love you" ("wo ai ni"). The sequence 748 ("qi si ba") sounds like the curse for "drop dead".
Predictive text software that attempts to guess words (Tegic's T9 as well as iTAP) or letters (Eatoni's LetterWise) reduces the labour of time-consuming input. This makes abbreviations not only less necessary, but slower to type than regular words which are in the software's dictionary. However it does make the messages longer, often requiring the text message to be sent in multiple parts and therefore costing more to send.
Website portals such as transl8it have supported a community of users to help standardize this text speak by allowing users to submit translations, staking claim with their user handle, or to submit top messages and guess the lingo phrases. The international popularity of this portal resulted in late 2005 the publishing of the transl8it! dxNRE & glosRE (dictionary & glossary) as the world's first, and most complete, SMS and text lingo book.
Social impact of SMS
Text messaging is often done in forms of shortened words. for example: i love you is shortened to "ily" or "ilu".
The negative social implications of texting have been outlined; such as a harmful change in student academia, colloquialisms that have been regarded as normal language, (‘LOL’, ‘L8’, ‘CYA’) the disregard of face to face communication and bullying that has taken place through text messaging.
There are many positive implications of text messaging. Text messaging is a vehicle for participatory culture. It allows people to send texts to determine what is shown in certain media outlets. The most current example is ‘Australian/American Idol’. Viewers can actively make a choice of who they wish to see on the program.
Furthermore, texting is a simple way of communicating and receiving information ‘on the move’. Texting can also bring people together and create a sense of community through ‘Smart Mobs’ or ‘Net Wars’, which create ‘people power’
Distraction
Texting while driving is said to lead to increased distraction behind the wheel. In 2006, Liberty Mutual Insurance Group conducted a survey with more than 900 teens from over 26 high schools nationwide. The results showed that 37% of students found texting to be, "very" or "extremely" distracting. Then later on, a study by [AAA] (American Automobile Association) discovered that an alarming 46% of teens admitted to being distracted behind the wheel due to texting. One example of distraction behind the wheel is the 2008 Chatsworth train collision which killed 25 passengers. Upon closer investigation it became known that the conductor of that train had sent 45 text messages while operating.
"Sexting"
Sexting is slang for the act of sending sexually explicit or suggestive content between mobile devices using SMS. A genre of texting, it contains either text, images or video that is intended to be sexually arousing.
A portmanteau of sex and texting, sexting was reported as early as 2005 in the Sunday Telegraph Magazine, constituting a trend in the creative use of SMS to excite another with alluring messages throughout the day.
Although sexting often takes place consensually between two people, it can also occur against the wishes of a person who is the subject of the content. A number of instances have been reported where the recipients of sexting have shared the content of the messages with others, with less intimate intentions, such as to impress their friends or embarrass their sender. Celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Hudgens, and Adrienne Bailon have been victims of such abuses of sexting.
A 2008 survey by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com suggested a trend of sexting and other seductive online content being readily shared between teens. One in five teen girls surveyed (22 percent)—and 11 percent of teen girls ages 13–16 years old—say they have electronically sent, or posted online, nude or semi-nude images of themselves. One-third (33 percent) of teen boys and one-quarter (25 percent) of teen girls say they were shown private nude or semi-nude images. According to the survey, sexually suggestive messages (text, email, and instant messaging) were even more common than images, with 39 percent of teens having sent or posted such messages, and half of teens (50 percent) having received them.
Sexting becomes a legal issue when teens (under 18) are involved because any nude photos they may send of themselves would put the recipients in possession of child pornography.
Academic impact
Text messaging has had an impact on students academically, by creating an easier way to cheat on exams. In December 2002, a cheating scheme was uncovered during final-exam week at the University of Maryland, College Park. A dozen students were caught cheating on an accounting exam through the use of text messages on their mobile phones. In December 2002, Hitotsubashi University in Japan failed 26 students for receiving e-mailed exam answers on their mobile phones.
Highly publicized reports, beginning in 2002, of the use of text language in school assignments caused some to become concerned that the quality of written communication is on the decline. While some reports claim that teachers and professors are beginning to have a hard time controlling the problem, the notion that text language is widespread or harmful is refuted by research from linguistic experts.
Criminal impact
Not only has text messaging had an impact in schools, but also on police forces around the world. A British company developed, in June 2003, a program called Fortress SMS for Symbian phones. This program used 128 bit AES encryption to protect SMS messages. Police have also retrieved deleted messages to frame cult member Sara Svensson after confessing to murdering the wife of pastor Helge Fossmo and having shot his lover's husband Daniel Linde in Knutby, Sweden. They traced the messages because she said she had acted anonymously on text forwards received in her phone.
Police in Tilburg, the Netherlands, started an SMS alert program where they would send a message to ask citizens to be vigilant when a burglar was on the loose or a child was missing in their neighborhood. Several thieves have been caught and children found using the "SMS Alerts". The service has been expanding rapidly to other cities. A Malaysian/Australian company released its "Crypto for Criminals" multi-layer SMS security program called CryptoSMS. Text messages can really help police stop crime because it is a secret way of getting out an s.o.s. Boston police are now turning to text messaging to help stop crime. They have an anonymous program where you can text in a crime tip anonymously to help stop crime rates.
Social Unrest
Texting has been used on a number of occasions with the result of the gathering of large aggressive crowds. SMS messaging drew a crowd to Cronulla Beach in Sydney resulting in the 2005 Cronulla riots. Not only were text messages circulating in the Sydney area, but in other states as well (Daily Telegraph). The volume of such text messages and emails also increased in the wake of the riot. The crowd of 5000 at stages became violent, attacking certain ethnic groups. Sutherland Shire Mayor directly blamed heavily circulated SMS messages for the unrest.NSW police considered whether people could be charged over the texting Retaliatory attacks also used SMS.
The Narre Warren Incident, where a group of 500 party goers attended a party at Narre Warren in Melbourne Australia and rioted in January 2008, also was a response of communication being spread by SMS and Myspace. Following the Incident, the Police Commissioner wrote an open letter asking young people to be aware of the power of SMS and the internet. In Hong Kong, government officials find that text messaging helps socially because they can send multiple texts to the community. Officials say it is an easy way of contacting community or individuals for meetings or events.
Political impact
Text messaging has had a major impact on the political world. American campaigns find that text messaging is a much easier, cheaper way of getting to the voters than the door to door approach. Mexico's president-elect Felipe Calderón launched millions of text messages in the days immediately preceding his narrow win over Andres Manuel Lopez Obradór. In January 2001, Joseph Estrada was forced to resign from the post of president of the Philippines. The popular campaign against him was widely reported to have been co-ordinated with SMS chain letters. A massive texting campaign was credited with boosting youth turnout in Spain's 2004 parliamentary elections.
Text messaging has been used to turn down other political leaders. During the 2004 US Democratic and Republican National Conventions, protestors used an SMS based organizing tool called TXTmob to get to opponents. In the last day before the 2004 presidential elections in Romania, a message against Adrian Nastase was largely circulated, thus breaking the laws that prohibited campaigning that day. No action was taken.
Text messaging has helped politics by promoting campaigns. In 2006, the Scottish Socialist Party initiated a campaign for people to text the First minister Jack McConnell to demonstrate their support for free school meals. SMS messages were used by Chinese nationalists to rapidly spread word of the time and location of demonstrations during the 2005 anti-Japanese demonstrations. Political organisations such as Cymru X, the Plaid Cymru youth wing, and the Young Scots for Independence, the youth wing of the Scottish National Party, have used a "text referendum" to gain public support and raise the profile of their respective causes.
Furthermore, on January 20, 2001, President Joseph Estrada of the Philippines became the first head of state in history to lose power to a smart mob. More than one million Manila residents assembled at the site of the 1986 People Power peaceful demonstrations that has toppled the Marcos Regime. These people have organized themselves and coordinated their actions through text messaging. They were able to bring down a government without having to use any weapons or violence. Through text messaging their plans and ideas were communicated to others and successfully implemented. Also, this move encouraged the military withdraw their support from the regime and as a result the Estrada government fell. People were able to converge and unite with the use of their cell phones. "The rapid assembly of the anti-Estrada crowd was a hallmarkof early smart mob technology, and the millions of text messages exchanged by the demonstrators in 2001 was, by all accounts, a key to the crowds esprit de corps.
Society
Text messaging has turned up in other aspects of our society. A Malaysian court had ruled that it is legal to divorce through the use of text messaging as long as you are clear and unequivocal. In November 2006, New Zealand Qualifications Authority approved the move that allowed students of secondary schools to use mobile phone text language in the end of the year exam papers. The use of text messaging has changed the way that people talk and write essays, some believing it to be harmful.
The Guinness Book of World Records has a world record for text message, currently held by Ang Chuang Yang of Singapore. Mr. Ang keyed in the official text messaging sentence, as established by Guinness, in 41.52 seconds.
Elliot Nicholls of Dunedin, New Zealand currently holds the World Record for the fastest blindfolded text messaging. A record of a 160 letter text in 45 seconds while blindfolded was set on the 17th of November 2007, beating the old record of 1 minute 26 seconds set by an Italian during September 2006.
The World Records Academy has a world record set for text messaging in a month, set by Andrew Acklin of North Olmsted, Ohio. The record currently sits at 19,678, but the new unofficial record set by him is 25,056.
An article in The New Yorker explores how text messaging has “Americanized” some of the world’s languages with English. The use of diacritical marks is dropped in languages such as French, as well as symbols in Ethiopian language. In his book, Txtng: the Gr8 Db8, David Crystal says: “Texters in all eleven languages use “lol,” “u,” “brb,” and “gr8,” all English-based shorthands.” American popular culture is also recognized in shorthand. For example, Homer Simpson translates into: ~(_8^(|).
"From beyond the grave," it seems that America's twentieth century etiquette guru, Emily Post still has lessons regarding people living in the twenty-first century. At the The Emily Post Institute website, the topic of texting has spurred several articles, with the "do's and dont's of regarding the new form of communication. One example from the site is: "Keep your message brief. No one wants to have an entire conversation with you by texting when you could just call him or her instead."
Texting while driving and texting while walking have introduced new public safety risks. Although texting while driving is essentially a new and riskier variety of the older problem of using a mobile phone while driving, texting while walking is a new species of risk, since unlike pedestrians who talk on a mobile phone, texting pedestrians cannot clearly see where they are going. The impracticability of criminalizing careless "textwalking" has led to proposals to attract social disapproval to the practice, much as social disapproval was directed at independent-minded pedestrians in the United States early in the twentieth century through the promotion of a term of ridicule for them: jaywalkers. To some extent, the term textlemming is beginning to serve this purpose.
Medical
The excessive use of the thumb for pressing keys on mobile devices has led to a high rate of a form of repetitive strain injury termed "Blackberry thumb."
As well as 'blackberry thumb' an American Journal of Psychiatry study in March 2008 found that excessive text messaging was also potentially the cause or a sign of mental illness. According to Dr. Jerald Block the four main issues stemming from text messaging are:
• Feelings of withdrawal when being away from the technology and unable to text;
• Increased need for better equipment and texting abilities;
• Need of more time - Australians spend at least 30 minutes per day sending texts
• Negative social and mental repercussions.
This highlights that due to the increased use and accessibility of the form of communication, many numbers of users are unable to function within their daily lives to the extent that not having the device and ability to text around them can in fact become damaging rather than healthy.
Texting has also been linked as a secondary source in numerous motor accidents, in which police investigations of mobile phone records have found that many drivers have lost control of their cars whilst attempting to send or retrieve a text message. Increasing cases of internet addiction are now also being linked to text messaging, as mobile phones are now more likely to have email and web capabilities to complement the ability to text.
Business
The use of text messaging for business purposes has grown significantly during the mid '00's. As companies seek competitive advantages, many employees turn to new technology, collaborative applications, and real-time messaging like SMS, instant messaging, and mobile communications. Some practical uses of text messaging include the use of SMS for sending alerts (e.g. "The phone system is down"), for confirming delivery or other tasks, and for instant communication between a service provider and a client (e.g. stock broker and investor).
As text messaging has proliferated in business, so too have regulations governing its use. In highly regulated industries like financial services, energy and commodities trading, and health care, government regulations have steadily kept pace with technology innovations and now address the need to supervise and archive employee text messages. One regulation specifically governing the use of text messaging in financial services firms engaged in stocks, equities, and securities trading is Regulatory Notice 07-59, Supervision of Electronic Communications, December 2007, issued to member firms by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. In 07-59, FINRA noted that "electronic communications", "email", and "electronic correspondence" may be used interchangeably and can include such forms of electronic messaging as instant messaging and text messaging. New technology has been developed to allow companies to archive text messages by companies.
Security, confidentiality, reliability and speed of SMS are among the most important guarantees industries like financial services, energy and commodities trading, health care and enterprises demand in their mission-critical procedures. One way to guarantee such a quality of text messaging lies in introducing SLAs (Service Level Agreement), which are a standard practice in IT world. By providing measurable SLAs, corporates can define reliability parameters and set up a high quality of their services.
Anxiety surrounding texting
The number of students caught using mobile phones to cheat on exams has increased significantly in recent years. According to Okada (2005), most Japanese mobile phones can send and receive long text messages of between 250 and 3000 characters with graphics, video, audio, and web links. In England, 287 school and college students were excluded from exams in 2004 for using mobile phones during exams. Some teachers and professors claim that advanced texting features can lead to students cheating on exams.
Spreading rumors and gossip by text is also an issue of great concern. Text "bullying" of this sort can cause distress and damage reputations. Harding and Rosenberg (2005) argue that the urge to forward text messages seems difficult to resist, describing text messages as "loaded weapons".
A survey conducted among mobile professionals in Europe and North America demonstrated that 94% of those surveyed believed bullying by SMS to be a reality. The survey was conducted via SMS among a pan European and North American mobile professional audience and 412 responded to the survey questions. The survey measured mobile professional’s opinion on bullying by SMS as well as their opinion on who should provide the protection against this threat.
Alternative Methods of texting
Texting is usually done through various phones, however, it is also possible to send texts using an email client, by sending an email to 10digitphonenumber@carrier. For example:
• Alltel: @message.alltel.com
• AT&T: txt.att.net
• Cingular: @cingularme.com
• Metro PCS: @MyMetroPcs.com
• Nextel: @messaging.nextel.com
• Powertel: ptel.net
• Sprint: @messaging.sprintpcs.com for
• SunCom: tms.suncom.com
• T-Mobile: @tmomail.net
• US Cellular: @email.uscc.net
• Verizon: @vtext.com
• Virgin Mobile:@vmobl.com
See also
External links
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