Why Do People Still Text
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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.
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@Dashrender said:
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.
I assume that that is a carrier thing? All phones hold texts, I hope, once they have received them.
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For people driving, email is really great. Because you get and send emails that are stored as connections are available. At least for every phone I have seen, texting requires you to watch it send and pay attention, sometimes for a few minutes, to see if it is received. And you still have the worry that their device is not with them and it just looks like they have access to it, but that is relatively minor. But with email, it just keeps trying to get the message out as it can, does not require manual intervention in case it fails. I've definitely had to spend ten minutes trying to get a text to send before even when there was signal. Without it, the time could be unlimited.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@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.
Yes and no - both services (SMS and email) require access to someone's network in order to function. Granted email requires access to the internet in general and SMS requires access to a cellular network that's compatible with the device, so this makes email probably significantly easier to access. This solves problems where an area might only have GSM cellular and you only have a CDMA phone but wifi/internet access is pretty much wifi/internet access anywhere you go.. so assuming you can get on the internet, you can get your email.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@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?
Because people move to new options at a glacial pace.
For example, I have FB chat on my phone, my wife does not. Why - because she hasn't had a need/desire. So If I want to talk to her quickly without a phone call, I have to use SMS.
Can I fix that? sure - I could install FB chat on her phone, show her how to use it and we'd be golden... but I'm just explaining the glacial pace that people move to new platforms.
The argument that kids stay on SMS as a form of defiance isn't one I've heard before - they do it because it's built it, easy and requires nearly no work (they already have all of their friends phone numbers in the phone, but they might not have all of their email addresses in there. Of course they all have Facebook now too, so many do use FB chat as well. and It's just as easy or easier than SMSing.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@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?
at least it did the last time I used it.
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I really wish I could switch to T-mobile but people on their plans in my area are the people who never have cell reception.
With texting I don't need to know the email account people check most often, or decide which account to email. It's also guaranteed to pop up on their phone, while some people never set up email access on their phone for whatever reason. When they do, the email apps are clunkier than the built-in messaging apps because they have to provide a bunch of extra features.
The biggest thing IMO is that there's a much better signal to noise ratio with texts. If I text someone I'm pretty sure they will see & read the message within 24 hours. Messages won't get lost in a sea of newsletters, spam, or anything like that. In contrast, there's a growing UX movement amongst mobile email apps to help people cut through email clutter and read what's actually important in their inbox.
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@scottalanmiller said:
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.
Yes, these people, where you happen to find yourself these days, are the major exception to the texting norm. The US doesn't have this problem as a general rule - you can take your cell phone with you pretty much anywhere in the country, and as long as you can make calls you can get and send text messages.
