SMS is dead, long live IM
Each year I begin to sweat around the 20th of December, my worry? how many of those insincere SMS’s am I going to have to reply to this month, you know the ones “A very Happy Christmas” to you and yours” , “All the best in 2011 to you and yours” I absolutely hate them, of course in our business they are like manna from heaven but the level of insecerity in them is appalling, even worse are the guys who forward the one with the Christmas tree shape that they got from a geeky friend.
Well this year a weird thing happened, none arrived, none, not even one, joy to the world, it got me thinking and calling friends though, How many SMS do you use? (standard Christmas question from me) , the resounding answer from the over 25′s is “very little to be honest” , SMS is still obviously a huge market worldwide with 1.6 trillion messages sent in 2010 and staggering 32 million sent by Meteor customers in 48hrs this week but even this is down 2.8 million.
IM it is for me, Facebook messages, Twitter DM, Blackberry messanger, WhatsAPP, KIK , Ovi Chat, Skype IM and PingChat are now all used by a variety of friends, colleagues and acquaintances across the full spectrum of mobile devices globally.
The good news for us carriers is that the replacement for SMS is so fragmented that its going to take years to make the full move possible but a lot of above are cross platform especially the likes of KIK and PingChat and with smartphones now becoming the norm the humble SMS shouldnt see out the new decade.
What do you think?
By the way I am patphelan1 on PingChat if you want to say hello
I can definitely see a break away from the ‘group / send to all’ text messages around Christmas and the usual crap around new years. BUT in saying that, i don’t think SMS will be over taken.
There are too many alternatives such as ‘Oh does Mary ever check her FB? Does she have WhatsAPP on the iPhone?’ etc Oh il just lash her off a text message’.
Personally i have gone full circle, knowing that something like the above would be not personal and annoying i will usually ring someone to wish them happy anything nowadays. And if i was to send a general text message i would always make it personal and address is by name.
WhatsAPP is impressive but sadly , i think i only have 10 or so contacts using it in my contacts.
Almost complete opposite here – loathe Facebook chat and messages – email and SMS all the way, though obviously none of the impersonal mass texts any more.
Twitter DM’s the odd time but can’t see anything beating SMS for that quick, straight to my device delivery just yet. Ease of use I think is what it is.
I’d consider IM on the Android if there was a good client and only certain people had the address, like your mobile number, if you get me.
I got about twelve texts Christmas day – 4 of them personal, the rest mass greeting ones.
SMS will not go away because it is so lucrative to carriers: http://tinyurl.com/a72qor
Pat,
I’m low SMS user. Even lower since I’ve sorted out skype for my better half. Suspect when I give her my old iPhone it’ll drop even more.
The biggest texters I know are under 25 and over 60(my mum and her mates text a lot more than me).
Wondering about needing multiple identities on skype at the moment (gets a lot of both work and personal use and might be useful to split the too) Can only see use here growing over time which is funny as this is almost the oldest technology I’ve used -recalling using chat on Vax in 1988.
SMS will be very stubborn in it’s death. It’s quick, and most phones come with an app for it built in.
It doesn’t require a data connection, or data plan or anything to use it.
I use IM a lot, mainly google talk personally, and skype im for work comms and I love it..
If I want normal im , there are many PC and phone clients to which I just pop in my google creds (jabber/xmpp) and off I go. I have clients like pidgin on the desktop, IM+ on my iOS devices
Downside for phone is that it’s doing to use data. Not a problem personally as I have plenty data on a plan, but I know many using payg phones, or traveling who do not want an app ‘wasting’ data just for IM.
What I’m getting put off with IM wise is the amount of new crowds wanting me to signup to a completely new service. I dont care about pingchat, kik, whatsapp, or the 100 other services like it. My existing xmpp IM account is 100% perfect, provided by google and I’ve used it for years. I dont want something that’s either a new account, or only going to work on my phone. Maybe I’m suffering from account fatigue, but I’m going to get no use out of that. By all means, someone try get me using some new app or platform, but let me just use my existing IM account which already has my contacts, that I know works from my laptop or a webapp.
Have to agree Pat. I think that the technology available on smart phones and the ever increasing use of social networking will provide a platform for developers a design more engaging, personalized and direct means of communication. The one thing that bugs me about Twitter (huge fan btw) is auto DM’s
Have to agree Pat. I think that the technology available on smart phones and the ever increasing use of social networking will provide a platform for developers to design a more engaging, personalized and direct means of communication. The one thing that bugs me about Twitter (huge fan btw) is auto DM’s
For me, the vast majority of Christmas SMS’s were replaced not by Private/Instante Messaging but by Facebook Wall Posts / Twitter. I think I got 2 texts from 2 girls who are not heavy FB users, everyone else just broadcast their messages on their walls.
In one way, it became less personalised, (as people just broadcast their greetings to everyone) but it also kind of confirmed that the group-text- greetings are just as impersonal.
Even as third party IM like services get wider adoption, they are require some form of “push services”. Apple and now Android (under trial) offer their own push services. The carriers can utilize port directed SMS to offer more battery efficient push service. This could provide the carriers an alternate source of revenue.
I noted the lack of happy xmas sms’s and hope for a similar famine on Friday. I did get several twitter msgs and DM’s and a few on facebook. I put it down to the recession or hoping people had at long last got sense.
I have definitely reduced the number of texts I send – only text one friend and the other half really these days. The rest is fb/email/im. The stupid android keyboard on my galaxy spica may have more to do with this though – so infuriating. I wonder if I was on a blackberry would I sms more.
mmm,,, got me thinking. I didn’t notice until you said it but yeah, not one xmass SMS. That’s got to be some kind of ‘social gestural” turning point (SMS as Poke/ Wall post/ etc). Got me thinking about SMS as push notification as opposed to social message. You could be on to something there
I don’t get “social email” any more either.
Great article. I think that it’s true that not as many SMS are being sent, but I think it will always be about. Not everyone has smart phones or use social networking (I know it’s hard to believe) and they will remain to use SMS.
I use SMS to converse with family and friends still, especially for important personal messages, for example ‘I will collect you from the airport at 5pm’. Ping and other apps rely on good 3G reception or WIFI so they’re not always ideal.
Personally I hate gchat and IM, and rarely sign in or use them, but that’s just me, but it shows that a guaranteed way of getting your message instantly is by SMS. I even have friends that get delivery report texts!
Speaking of generic Christmas texts, must set up my New Years Eve texts on Webtext, which is still alive and well.
I don’t think it’s that simple. Personally, there are some people I refuse to engage with on SMS, as they think nothing of texting me at all hours and it gets annoying. I hate FB messages and will take days to reply to them. Email (which is also supposedly “dead” according to many) is still the best for me – doesn’t have the urgency attached that SMS or IM does. Apart from having Skype open at work, I’m not accessible by IM (never use it on my own time, but then again I don’t even turn on my laptop outside of the office).
If your SMS count is down, I guess you sent a lot more Christmas cards in 1999 than you did this year.
I totally agree with you. sms usage is definitely dropping worldwide. Years ago i used to send over 200 during the xmas and another 200 durin the new year but now that number has come down to about 10 percent of that. And i think the other mediums such as twitter and Fb messages have somehow helped and also my nonchalance to do that anymore
Twitter: shanekny
30th December, 2010 at 3:24 pm
SMS is and always has been robbery. The amount of bandwidth used by text is so minuscule, they should be free. As more people get smart phones with push email, IM and instant notifications, it simply wont make any sense to send texts.
My family and friends in South Africa cannot afford smartphones just yet. So SMS is still very much king. Give it a few more years though and smartphones will be affordable even in Africa. I’m looking forward to the Nokia 3210 of smartphones (an Android?) to penetrate in Africa.
Like you, I didn’t get any Happy Christmas SMSs, Pat. But New Year will be the acid test – I expect to get 5-10 on NYE tbh….
Think we’re a long way from dead SMS tho – we’re very much in a minority of the user-base I believe. I still have a fair few friends still only on SMS, without any SM accounts…
Will be interesting to revisit this thread in a few days and see if there’s any revised opinions….
@cobyrne
This reply is a bit off topic. But it is not a fair measure to use only the bandwidth consumed by a single SMS. We have to take into the fact that SMS uses limited radio resource reserved for delivering incoming call indication. Also compared to keeping the data channel, SMS consumes little battery power. Agreed that it is debatable whether SMS has to be this expensive, but it can not be the same as regular data tariff. I am not sure why the carriers are not educating the public of this.
Twitter: Popple3
30th December, 2010 at 9:40 pm
I definitely got fewer SMS this year, and instead just saw a load of non-personal Facebook statuses, which I wouldn’t really count as IM. I didn’t send any SMS bar my girlfriend, and just posted a Facebook status too.
Overall, I definitely see IM replacing SMS between most of my friends, but I don’t think I can see a world with no SMS at all. It just seems like that simple medium that you know everyone has, and you can always rely on.
Twitter: shanekny
1st January, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Anyone have data about failure rate of SMS, particularly at busy times? What percentage fails to deliver within 24 hours at peak times?