Text messaging has, since its invention, has become one of the most favoured methods of communication of our time. It’s simple to use and will be delivered immediately. There is no waiting around for someone to answer the phone, there is no having to make small talk and it is completely private. You can do it at your desk at work, you can do it while you are in the bath or you can do it whilst cooking the dinner, watching TV, dancing in a club or in a waiting room. In fact, you can do it absolutely anywhere, apart from while you are driving, and nobody else knows about it.
Unless, of course, you send it to the wrong person and then you could possibly be in the brown stuff up to your neck (voice of experience). This is something you don’t want to do, particularly if the message is either uncomplimentary or personal.
It is now possible to be notified of appointments, offers, events and personal reminders via text message and for this to be possible a whole industry has sprung up offering text messaging services to companies and organisations.
Is this a worthwhile service I hear you ask? Why not just ring the person involved and talk to them? Well, that sort of thing takes a great deal of time and time itself is something that nobody has enough of these days. It would also be pretty annoying to be rung in the middle of dinner to find out that someone was trying to sell you tickets to one event or another.
So, with a text messaging service, it can be automated and there is no need to pay staff to do it for you. It’s also a pretty good form of advertising as I know myself. When I have been contacted by an automated text messaging service to let me know of upcoming concert tickets I have considered it much more seriously than I would if I had read about the concert.
A text messaging service is also a way of getting information to people that they wouldn’t necessarily go looking for. Again, this is a form of advertising and one that can be done at a much reduced cost to the business.
There is a whole dating industry set up that utilises text messaging services too. Internet dating sites and even The Times and other such reputable papers have a personal column that uses text messages for people to get in touch with each others. That lack of personal touch comes in handy in these circumstances, in the event of one party or another backing out without losing face.
Social networking sites also use text messaging services for when users are offline. If a message comes in, it can either be forwarded to the users mobile phone via text or that person can simply be sent an automated message notifying them that a message is waiting for them. This will entice the user back to their PC quicker than they might have done if they hadn’t received the text. This thus generates more business for the user.
We then have the slightly more dubious market of porn businesses that use text messaging services to put working girls/boys in touch with potential customers.
It seems however we dress it up and however people complain about the lack of personal touch, text messaging is here to stay as a method of communication that is probably the most convenient.
Communications expert Catherine Harvey looks at how some companies use text messaging services to advertise and notify their customers.
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