Why Do People Still Text
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@Dashrender said:
I don't hold conversations over text - more than 3 text in one direction and I convert to either a phone call or real IM. Phone if I'm not at my computer, and IM if I am at my computer. And these days, I really don't get many texts because I use FB chat 80% of the time anyway...
So you don't have the issue of people not having access to those other things? That was a key reason that people had said they were using texting in the first place, the lack of Internet on one side or the other.
Why use texts at all if both sides already have the other mechanisms?
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@Dashrender said:
Yes in Google Hangouts
Interesting. I was not aware of this. That's a "nice" feature. So it just shows up like any other Google IM channel but to a phone number rather than to a person?
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@scottalanmiller For the most part, yes. I have a browser addon (I could also do this through Hangouts website) that I can see and respond to any SMS message that comes in via my Google Voice number. I can respond from any device that or browser that has my Google account attached to it.
I don't even give out my real cell phone number any more.
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Also, for traveling, texting often requires getting a new number, and therefore a new identity, in different countries. Texting for people outside of the US can require quite a bit of extra management.
I have friend who travel and email and Facebook work but texting is something that they lost. They were texters before, then suddenly everyone had to figure out how to reach them. Texting, I feel, is less consistent especially in times of emergency.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
I get unlimited texts and calls no unlimited data. Text is much similar and easier than email, and is much more instant, email servers have delays and emails aren't checked as often by most.
I've measured SMS delay at roughly three hours between carriers, two people sitting at the same table in the same restaurant able to send emails "instantly" while waiting for the SMS to go through. Many times, in Dallas right in the heart of the metro.
Both have the potential for huge delay. This is actually a reason that I hate texting, it gives end users the impression of being instant but no guarantee. Email people understand is likely instant, but there is no guarantee.
The email thing isn't true - When email is slow for whatever reason, my boss is up my keyster wondering why her normally instant email isn't instant.
I agree that people believe that texting is instant and somehow guaranteed, but they also believe the same with email. Heck - I remember back in dial-up days having email conversations with people that were long distant to me - before IM was around (we weren't on the AOL or other networks, just plain internet dial-up).
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
It still does mean that. that's why you don't text everyone you email most things and text for more personal and more urgent things.
Except the only people who text me, at least, don't use email at all. So everything has moved to text. Anyone who has and uses email knows that that gets me faster, more reliably and with more urgency.
really? if those people are sending things only via text to you, perhaps that's because a) they never use email or b) they don't have enough to say to bother composing an email - again that believe that emails are more formal - look at Matt's example above.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
I get unlimited texts and calls no unlimited data.
Doesn't need to be unlimited. You can send tens of thousands of emails, maybe hundreds of thousands, on purely free plans. The word "unlimited" is misleading as the data plans are effectively unlimited and often the plans called unlimited for text will actually have a cap.
By free I assume you mean the use of someone else's wifi connection, not a cellular data connection.
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@Dashrender said:
b) they don't have enough to say to bother composing an email - again that believe that emails are more formal - look at Matt's example above.
Maybe, but that's my point... why? Are we just saying that end users are so confused that we should give up and there is no helping them and they will communicate badly? I get that, I understand. I'm not saying we can fix the world, but if we don't try it gets worse more quickly, right?
This is something I struggle with. I feel like it is condescending if I agree to this being the reason, that I'm giving users too little credit and it is wrong to do so. I keep fighting to find another reason.
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@Dashrender said:
By free I assume you mean the use of someone else's wifi connection, not a cellular data connection.
I've listed this caveat before. And I totally understand that it is apples or oranges. BUT.... with convergence you have to assume that you will, one way or another, attempt to have Internet access. That might be a horribly wrong assumption, but that is the assumption. That by going to a single universal platform you eliminate the need to get many platforms AND the platform is vendorless and generic. So I can use any Internet, anywhere to get what I need. I can borrow someone's phone, computer or wifi... all will let me retrieve my email. The email itself costs nothing, the platform is universal and equitable.
With an SMS I cannot do that (unless I hijack it to non-SMS like Apple and Google are doing - which is an attempt to reconverge a non-convergent technology.) If a message goes to SMS and my phone is gone, destroyed, number changed, out of service, etc. that's it. I can't switch to another medium to get that message. I can't borrow something to get to it. I am carrier dependent, service dependent, number dependent and device dependent.
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@scottalanmiller While I agree that yes, everything could be sent by email, is there no room for another option?
Everyone who drives a car should drive a fuel efficient, small, built for A to B car. I feel like that's the argument you're in here.
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@Dashrender said:
really? if those people are sending things only via text to you, perhaps that's because a) they never use email or b)
Except for the teens, they all had email and switched off of it because it "wasn't cool" or whatever. I've actually been told "wasn't cool" as a reason before.
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@MattSpeller said:
Everyone who drives a car should drive a fuel efficient, small, built for A to B car. I feel like that's the argument you're in here.
This is not a comparison. The issue is that when you text people you do it to other people. If this was about HOW you read your communications it would not matter. It is about how you force others to communicate.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
Then for you it has. Not for most people. You are the exception not the normal case.
This seems odd. This exactly the type of case where people would tell me that but in the opposite direction.
I feel this is a common logic problem. No matter what I observe I'm the edge case. One time it's because I'm too technical. Now my circle is not technical enough.
Is it really the case that almost no one has people using text for normal communications and only for emergencies and actually use email for all normal communications? I don't feel like I know anyone in real life like this anymore. Especially no one with kids.
Email is not conducive to conversations - mainly because of the client interface. Clearly this is something MS is working on with MS Send. If I want to have a 3-5 sentence conversation with someone, I can do that via text, I open the message, choose the person, send my question, they respond, I respond, they respond, done
In email that looks like (at best) I open email address the email, type a question and hit send. they respond, I respond, they respond done. This of course assumes they receive notices of new incoming email similar to text message. Better email clients will show these emails in a conversation view, older ones will show you the headers for each and every message between the important bits. Damn that's a lot of wasted space.
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@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller While I agree that yes, everything could be sent by email, is there no room for another option?
There is a TON of room for other options. I've never said everything should be email. I just said everything should not be text
And even that is going too far, I just think that text should be what it was designed to be - emergency paging as a second system (after phone or email have been attempted, perhaps only seconds before.)What I'm campaigning for is convergence, not for email. Email is just a handy was to show that texting isn't adding functionality.
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@scottalanmiller said:
If this was about HOW you read your communications it would not matter. It is about how you force others to communicate.
So how is switching to email any different? Nothing says you can't reply to a text with an email, or vice versa. Do you feel penned in by texting?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
I've never had a plan with texting caps. But all of them have Data Caps.
Show us where a 100% free data plan exists.I already did, TMobile offers it, my dad has it. 400Mb/s month on tablets, totally free. Works great. He can't send enough emails to touch that.
Assuming you have a mobile phone with them. 400 Mb a month? I suppose if all you are doing is emailing you can get by on that - my normal usage is closer to 1-1.5 GB
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@MattSpeller said:
So how is switching to email any different? Nothing says you can't reply to a text with an email, or vice versa. Do you feel penned in by texting?
If I receive texts that are not alerts, I must either block people or lose my alerting capabilities. It's the reception that causes the problem.
And replying via email doesn't make sense because it causes them to lose context and requires that we track multiple accounts and tie devices to users which is not always the case - it's conceptually two different account types. In some cases, but not many, I COULD reply via email, but would be very cumbersome for everyone involved getting messages one place, looking for responses elsewhere.
It's the fact that we have and have had a universal system that works great for this and is converged and we've fallen back to an old system that is not converged but cannot replace the converged one. Text can't do what email does, it's not capable. But email can do what text does and always has.
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@Dashrender said:
Assuming you have a mobile phone with them. 400 Mb a month?
My father does not. I'm not aware of that being a limitation.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@Dashrender said:
I'm not sure I agree with that - I see texting more as a replacement for short 5-20 second phone calls.
Yep. This!!
Though I really do like IM way better than texting too - for all the reasons Scott has mentioned before - the draw back of course is you must be online to use it, where some phones will hold a text message until you get back in range, others won't.
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@Dashrender said:
400 Mb a month? I suppose if all you are doing is emailing you can get by on that - my normal usage is closer to 1-1.5 GB
Mine is like 200MB - 300MB. But that's not the point. That you even need to say the "assuming" but highlights the value of convergence. You are adding on functionality that texting does not have and implying that it might be more valuable than the email. Sure, that's fine. But that is something text can't do at all. So in one case (unconverged, non-Internet) we have functionality X. In the other we have converged Internet with functionality X, Y and Z. You can't talk about how X is not as cool as Y or Z or that you don't get enough Y or Z when comparing to purely X because at least you get some compared to none.
