Why Do People Still Text
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@thecreativeone91 said:
I've never had a plan with texting caps. But all of them have Data Caps.
You'd have to use a ton of them to really know.
But "unlimited" here is misleading, is it not? Can you go anywhere and use that plan? Or just in certain places, like in the US? Email continues to be free anywhere. Sure, you need to get Internet access and that isn't necessarily free. But the point of convergence is that you carrier, all needs. As opposed to the cell phone system where you need special arrangements for each protocol.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
This is further reduced that most phones can pull contact list information from email systems that the phone attach to, centralizing the management of all of the contact information for a person - their name, phone number, email address, mailing address,etc.
True, but we are relying on more and more complicated systems to cover up the fact that fundamentally it's not doing the job we wanted it to do. People are using texting as if it is email and trying hard to make it do what email has always done.
I'm not sure I agree with that - I see texting more as a replacement for short 5-20 second phone calls. I no longer call my wife before driving home, which could lead to a 20 min conversation, instead I text her - Leaving, need me to stop for anything?
If she responds yes she's already given a list.. if she says no.. the conversation is over... and I'm now on the road.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
This is further reduced that most phones can pull contact list information from email systems that the phone attach to, centralizing the management of all of the contact information for a person - their name, phone number, email address, mailing address,etc.
True, but we are relying on more and more complicated systems to cover up the fact that fundamentally it's not doing the job we wanted it to do. People are using texting as if it is email and trying hard to make it do what email has always done.
I'm not sure I agree with that - I see texting more as a replacement for short 5-20 second phone calls.
Yep. This!!
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@scottalanmiller said:
But "unlimited" here is misleading, is it not? Can you go anywhere and use that plan? Or just in certain places, like in the US? Email continues to be free anywhere. Sure, you need to get Internet access and that isn't necessarily free. But the point of convergence is that you carrier, all needs. As opposed to the cell phone system where you need special arrangements for each protocol.
Unlimited has nothing to do with coverage. You pull out random unrelated facts trying to make an argument that doesn't hold up.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Unlimited has nothing to do with coverage. You pull out random unrelated facts trying to make an argument that doesn't hold up.
But it does. That's part of the point. You are using unlimited as if it means free or included. That you don't have to pay for it. But you are paying for access to the service and you get it curtailed. My email works without a penalty anywhere I go, anytime. It's very, very related.
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What if you could only text people while in one building? Or in one town? It's not COVERAGE that we are talking about, that's misleading, it is "unlimited." It's only unlimited in certain places. You can have coverage but have to pay per text. I know of no plan with any carrier where texting is unlimited anywhere you have coverage.
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@Dashrender said:
I'm not sure I agree with that - I see texting more as a replacement for short 5-20 second phone calls. I no longer call my wife before driving home, which could lead to a 20 min conversation, instead I text her - Leaving, need me to stop for anything?
If you don't get texts that are not for this, then I would agree. Is this all you get or do you get the regular low priority stuff too?
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@Dashrender said:
If she responds yes she's already given a list.. if she says no.. the conversation is over... and I'm now on the road.
Much like paging was designed for. I agree.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Personally text messages to from me always imply the need for a more immediate answer than an email. Texting me means - you need an answer ASAP, emailing me means - get it whenever. And of course calling me means - it's truly urgent.
Problem is, once you have people using text instead of email, that can't be the case. If it were, you'd need to answer emails all the time with the same urgency as people don't all have texting.
I appreciate that texting should mean this, but for whom is this true anymore? Only those of us who don't talk over text anymore and who is that? It can't be both. Not unless you become completely beholded to the device.
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...
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller it's vendor neutral & free for everyone (at least up here, I can't recall a smartphone plan that does not include unlimited texts at minimum)
Is phone service up there free? I thought it was owned by just a couple of carriers and cost as much as it does down here. How do you, without a phone plan, access SMS?
Google Voice
Google offers free SMS? Okay, I can see that. So you can sign into a browser at the library and retrieve SMS messages that are saved up? Or you can have it on a laptop at home and send/receive SMS?
Yes in Google Hangouts
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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.
