Texting Is On The Decline | Hacker News Reader

Texting Is On The Decline

npr.org

26 pointssethbannon42 comments

The title is deceptive, it would be more accurate to say SMS is on the decline. There is no evidence or suggestion that the behavior of sending short messages (typically via your phone) is on the decline, it just seems to be moving to proprietary protocols such as iMessage. Usually when I "text" I am actually sending an iMessage because most of my friends use iOS devices. It may be interesting to someone concerned about the SMS protocol that it is on the decline, but as someone interested in how people use devices this does not effect me.

You know what else is on the decline? Listening to your voice messages. What people do is note that you called and then call you back later, having never listened to the message that you left. Kinda makes sense. The primary message in 99% of the cases is definitely "hey I called, call me back". We should go back to beepers.

First thing I did on my new sim card is call my provider and disable voice mail.

Most annoying feature ever, if I don't pick up, just send a text - 90+% of voicemail I ever received anyway was someone's pocket for 10minutes

I disable voicemail immediately. I absolutely hate the feature. Visual voicemail/voicemail to txt is.. okay. It's a fair trade. But if I'm somewhere where I can't answer the phone I want you to just send me a text message. Maybe (not always) I can answer you via text, or at least I can QUICKLY be aware of how important it is as opposed to calling my carrier, waiting for queues, hitting 4 buttons, having to skip through 3 old messages... Just to hear white noise because you didn't hang up immediately after the voicemail started.

The real problem with voicemail is the implementation. If it wasn't such a complete pain in the ass to get a message it would be useful. Personally I feel if the call actually gets to my phone, save it on the phone and make it one touch to receive it.

With the exception of "one touch", this ("Visual Voicemail") is exactly how voicemail has worked on every iPhone ever. I assume similar implementations are available for other platforms. The ony time I see the traditional "push 1 to listen" voicemail interface is when I use my iPhone on an unsupported network.

The problem is not everyone can text you. For example, I get missed calls from school, from my dentist office or from government agency. They don't text me back when I am offline. I hate calling strangers back.

I don't like listening to my voicemail either but it is still essential in today's communication. Just as not everyone has text enabled. But when the person is not available, I at least know he or she has voicemail enabled or not. Plus, I hate typing on my phone. It takes so much effort. My big hands never play nice with screen keyboard, whereas over voice I can just spill the words in 10 seconds.

> Just to hear white noise because you didn't hang up immediately after the voicemail started.

I don't know how often this happen but I think in general people nowadays either hang up immediately or the chance of plain white noise is pretty low.

Some of my friends are SMS users, some are twitter, some are FB, some are imessage. There is a big fragmentation and this is why a lot of chat app try to integrate with your native SMS (for example, FB Messenger). Or you get notification and reply over SMS (FB, Twitter)

I agree with you.

Moreover, I understood over the years that it's always better to communicate with people using their favourite means of communication: FB? MSN chat? mail? SMS? phone call? Whatever it is I just use it because it reduces friction.

Personally I favor email. I don't like being called on the phone but I find it convenient that I can call someone (like most people I suppose).

"Texting" isn't on the decline; simply an increasing number of text-based mobile messages are sent over different, more efficient network technology.

Finally, I don't text with anybody. The few people I know who text look at me like I'm crazy and ask, "well how do you keep in touch?" And I answer, e-mail, IM, phone calls, voice mail, facebook, kakao talk etc.

IM is so good these days it completely eliminates 100% of my texting needs. Texting feels so old fashioned, something out of the feature phone era.

edit

I also feel terribly cheated paying for texting knowing that it costs the phone companies effectively $0. On the rare occasion I do text, I groan audibly. I've actually gotten a google voice account purely for dealing with texters.

Yes, god forbid I have a phone and want to use it with the purpose for which it is intended to be used.

I disagree completely. There are so many IM/Messaging clients that have absolutely no connection to one another nowadays that it's absolutely terrible to try to find somebody on one. Sure, maybe all of your Programmer coworkers are on Gchat, but what about that guy/girl you met last week and are going on a date with? Are you going to ask them to download and install Kik? Sign up for a Google/AIM/Jabber account? What about that old friend you saw for the first time in a few years at a conference; you gonna do the same?

Texting is ubiquitous. I know that if you gave me your phone number that you can receive a text message. Whether it's ATT, Verrizon, Tmobile, Cricket, or some international carrier I know that I can communicate with you via a messaging tool (texting) without having to delve into whether or not you have a Kik/Viber/WhatsApp/Whatever account.

Obviously all of this is alleviated if we just pick up the phone and call one another, but I'm specifically talking about quick messaging options.

>I know that if you gave me your phone number that you can receive a text message.

Unless it is a landline. :)

In the UK if you send a text to a landline, the phone will ring and the message will be read to you. (via automatic voice of course) So yes, even a landline works in that case.

(Although maybe it's just on BT lines. Not sure.)

Or just send them an email. It's effectively just as quick.

I don't know your age, but I know very few people my age who use email for anything beyond professional correspondence. I don't want friends/girlfriends to email me if they need to communicate quickly. I can just see it now, "Hey Dave, wanna head to the W?" ... 8 hours later "Sorry, just got this, why didn't you text me?"

I get all my emails on my phone. I can answer them just as easy as a text. I really don't see the difference and haven't for years now.

You're also on hackernews. You're probably a programmer of some sort. Quit assuming that everybody else is a technology forward as you. Most of society does not get their emails on their phone. Most of cell-phone carrying society can always receive a text.

FWIW I'm the only person in my family that reads hacker news, and I'm also the only person in my family that does NOT receive personal email on my phone.

Yeah, people are different. Assuming everyone gets email on their phone vs text messaging which is pretty much ubiquitous is completely my point.

I can cement my point even further. You don't get emails, your family does, but you all get text messages.

Bam, that was easy.

Actually, I went through and thought about it a bit. Most of the people I know that are my age or younger have actually turned off texting because it's almost entirely used for spam. It's pretty much a byproduct of a time that's quickly going by.

These days, the only people I know who text are 45+...and with 1 exception, they're all struggling to decide if they want to switch to smartphones yet.

I can't think of a single person under that age I know who texts. They all use something else. Mostly google chat (or hangouts or whatever), kakaotalk or Facebook's IM.

If only there was a way for these different providers to interoperate. XMPP gets us most of the way there, but is a bit short on features - inline images still seem to be in development, for example. Worse, those providers that do support it don't consistently support federation, so I still can't talk to a Facebook user from Google Chat.

In a way, it's kind of sad watching technologies that really could have had a much longer shelf life go by the wayside simply because of corporate greed and stagnation. Reminds me of television and the absolutely horrid experience that has become over the past few years. And they wonder why people are ditching these services in droves for products that actually listen to their users and continue to improve themselves to offer a better experience. Good riddance.

FB Messenger, Snapchat and iMessage made huge inroads as well. It's not all greed, some of it's innovation

By "technology", you mean the thing that let you send 120 characters for multiple cents of money while the internet allows you to send gigabytes of data and doesn't care about which country you're sending to/from?

SMS is the greed imho!

I think zer0defex agrees with you

Oh, right, he ended with "Good riddance". Somehow missed that part :)

> With instant messaging services, including [...] and WhatsApp, the app is free.

I'm always amazed how well they did it. Noone ever mentions they start charging you after a year. Yet most people realize this only after they already have a lot of friends they talk to via WhatsApp and can't easily migrate to something else.

The cost is disclosed right on their download page:

"First year FREE! ($0.99 USD/year after)"[1]

The advantage of texting is that everyone is already capable of receiving your message and you don't need to subscribe to the same messaging services as the people you want to send messages to. This guaranteed interoperability is why texting (and e-mail and telephone calls) are not likely to become extinct any time soon.

Also, not all cellular plans charge extra for text messages. I've seen a lot of plans that come with unlimited texting bundled in.

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whatsapp-messenger/id3106339...

I've seen the price, but I've also seen 3 friends going through the installation procedure without spotting that. Most of my friends found out only when the trial ran out. And lots of articles present WA as a free service. (like the one here) The company definitely lets people know they'll be charged, but many ignore it (scroll, scroll, install, agree, agree, hey it works!)

But noone knows it. I've asked around: exactly zero of like 10 classmates knew.

I've been using it on my android phone for more than a year, and I've definitely never been charged. Don't know how they'd charge me anyway since I've never attached a credit card to the phone...

> start charging you after a year

Really? Oh, wait... http://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/23014681

As an American who only heard of TenCent late in 2013, I also did not know that WhatsApp was a subscription service. Holy batman that feels either evil or genius.

Makes sense why the app asked for my cell phone digits when I first installed, and I'm happy I never gave it...

I was really happy when they charged me, means I knew they weren't planning on selling out or spewing ads everywhere.

I definitely get more than 69p of value out of it per year

> Makes sense why the app asked for my cell phone digits when I first installed, and I'm happy I never gave it...

How does this have anything to do with the fee? The phone number is essentially your username. It automatically adds all the phone numbers in your address book as whatsapp contacts

edit: It's also not a subscription in that it never charges you automatically, you have to pay manually every time

> I was really happy when they charged me

Wow, that is a brilliant comment I can only agree with. I disliked Whatsapp for doing this (even though it's not even sneaky, nobody knows it), but yeah you are totally right. I am usually the first one to propose "I'd rather pay than see annoying ads."

I don't see any discussion about privacy or security. Text messaging is plain text, sent through a carrier who can produce those messages at will. Even iMessage seems to provide you more protection, although Apple could have a key to unlock all of those as well.

The "You pay for texts" argument doesn't make a lot of sense. Most of the phone plans come with free texting before free data.

I think the main reason why texting is in decline is mainly the "You can do more with instant message", especially the groups messages which the article doesn't mention.

It's so much easier to meet with your friends when you have a group conversation than texting friend by friend the same information. Group MMS exists, but they're not as responsive, a lot of people have them not working correctly, plus you can't really know who read the message.

A lot of the plans come at a higher price to include "free" texts. That's bundling of less popular product in a way that is still profitable. Kind of what journal distributors do.

On Verizon, unlimited texts is an extra charge per month.

In my environment, no one expects each other to text anymore - everything goes through Whatsapp instead.

The traditional usage of SMS communication is certainly declining. No doubt. But that doesn't mean I can take this article serious. The article lists the following as reasons to why SMS is declining:

You pay for texts: With a texting plan from your cell phone provider, you usually pay to send text messages.

Well, I speak for the popular providers out there. Most of them have unlimited texting at very reasonable price so it isn't like early 2000 where AT&T might charge you something per 100 text messages. For god sake, who does that?

http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans/prepaidplans.html

AT&T's GoPhone (prepaid, no annual contract) can have unlimited texting at as low as $25 (that includes texting text, picture and video).

For example, you can set a time limit for how long messages on Snapchat can be seen; you can send audio or video clips with WhatsApp.

This is totally application dependent. SMS was not created for that purpose and this is unfair to say SMS sucks because message doesn't expire. So of course it doesn't fit some people's requirements.

You don't have to worry about phone numbers

But you have to worry about an account. FB, Google Hangout, Snapchat all have accounts. Your number is your identity in SMS's world, and your email / app account is your identity to your contacts. If we want multiple numbers, then how is it different from facebook requires a different account? The SMS works just fine. It's that we tight the phone with a single number and because SMS is distributed in a phone, there is a single identity.

Where young people go, their elders will follow

I consider myself an elder for being 22. Okay. Joking aside, I mean I don't use WhatsApp or Snapchat. I didn't really start using Twitter until Q3 2013.

And to be honest, when the author says people over 55 will be buying smart phones at the quickest rate this year, this doesn't prove elders are following young people. The old flip phones are going away in the market. It's 2014 and there aren't that many left. Smartphones are everywhere (at least in the US). Do you see people carrying mobile phone from the 1990s? Of course not. Was that because the people in their 20s back then was carrying those small flip phones? No. Of course not. It was because people found value in the smaller and smarter mobile phones so they ditched the big mobile phone. When AT&T renew my 2-year contract I get discount on new mobile phones. Of course I will take advantage of that. I am not arguing that young people don't influence the market and how we buy things, but to say the decline of SMS has to do with elders following young people's footstep is not right.

Many applications are integrated with SMS. For example, you can reply and get notify via SMS on your phone. You don't need to have FB Messenger or Twitter app installed on your phone. I can disconnect my data connection and get notify on my phone. That's a great benefit. I don't need to connect to the internet all the time. I just connect when I need to.

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