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There are teens in the U.S. who own a cell phone, yet have never used it to make a call.
Many cell phone users, young and old alike, communicate on their devices mainly through texting. It's fast; it's efficient and it allows you to stay connected with friends and family without getting in the way of your other multitasking.
If you want an indication of how much text messaging has permeated mainstream society, just look to pop culture:
It is rumored that Britney Spears broke up with ex-husband, Kevin Federline, via text message.
Text messaging is the new way to communicate. It may also soon become the new way to
"We definitely see the future of mobile usage of texting to include a strong component of the ability to have services that are more than just socialization," said Brad Bostic, president and co-founder of ChaCha.com.
For instance, it is plausible that you may be able to buy the texting pop star's CD by sending a SMS message of your own. You can already buy CDs from country singer Tim McGraw this way. ShopText is promoting the concept of mobile phone shopping, or m-commerce. Customers first set up an account with the company. Once their cell phone is associated with a credit card in ShopText's system, all
Users of the service were able to pre-order J. K. Rowling's last Harry Potter book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by texting the word, "Potter," to a specific common short code.
Common short codes are four to six-digit numbers to which Short Message Service (SMS) messages can be sent from a mobile phone. Often, companies will use the letters found on standard keypads to spell out an easy to remember number. For instance, the phrase "text IDOL," is a familiar one on the reality talent show American Idol. Viewers are able to vote for who they think should be the next American Idol by sending a text message to the code for their favorite contestent.
Idol contestants aren't the only ones hoping to get votes through text messaging. Democratic presidential candidates Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama send supporters, who sign up for the service, regular text-messaged campaign updates. On Obama's Web site, you can even send a text message to have one of 12 campaign ringtones sent to your cell
Political candidates aren't the first ones to use texting for promotion. They took their cue from commercial enterprises. Twentieth Century Fox promoted the summer blockbuster Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer by allowing cell phone users to send a text message to a code that would send a link to the mobile user's phone where they could download a video game onto their device.
Text messaging is becoming the new TV ad. Brick and mortar stores such as Wal-Mart and Nordstrom use text messaging to draw customers into their establishments.
"We've been communicating with our customers by e-mail for many years and we thought that testing a mobile messaging program was a natural evolution of that," said Michael Boyd, spokesperson for Nordstrom Inc.
Nordstrom is in the testing phase for this mobile promotional tool. They are specifically targeting their younger customers by sending text message updates on their junior, or BP., collection.
"We know those customers use text messages more and more. They're increasingly popular and a convenient way for our younger customers to communicate. And we're always looking for new ways to communicate with our customers. So we geared that this would be a great test to communicate with those BP. customers and let them know about new merchandise, or sale events--or events in the store," said
Starbucks is also using texting to promote its business. If you are visiting a new city or an unfamiliar part of town and the craving for a vente white chocolate mocha with an extra shot of espresso hits you, if you have your cell phone and a healthy amount of disposable income, all you have to do is text your zip code to MYSBUX (697289) and voila, you have three locations for nearby Starbucks where you can pick up your brew, sent directly to your phone.
If you are searching for more than coffee on your mobile phone, arguably, one of the most intriguing new uses of text messaging is being pioneered by ChaCha.com.
"Originally ChaCha was conceived over a lunch with my partner, Scott Jones and I, back in December of 2005. We were actually just talking about the kind of ultimate, in our view, was if you could ask a question and be connected to somebody who had knowledge on the topic that you were searching for," said Bostic.
ChaCha.com is a web-based search engine that uses real-live people in order to search for answers. The idea being, that by using human intelligence, users of the site will get more relevant answers to their queries.
"So when you ask a question on ChaCha, you're actually getting routed to a human guide who has knowledge on the topic that you are looking for. And we are able to spend all of 2007 really building out that community of guides, really utilizing ChaCha.com as the place where people were able to connect with guides and get answers. And also just do more traditional search. But ultimately we were building up that entire time to being able to launch on the mobile phone, because we think that that's the place where people really need the most help," said Bostic.
If you are out and about and you need information, it is just a text message away. You can use the text messaging feature of ChaCha to find the location of a restaurant, find movie times, a local flower shop--you name it. Basically, anything that you would normally look up using a search engine at your desktop, you can look up using the texting feature of ChaCha.com on your mobile phone.
"On January 3rd of 2008, what we launch is our first mobile product, is our ChaCha mobile answers product via text messaging. So, It's essentially like you're asking a really smart friend, through a text message, to provide you an answer to a question. And you're able to just create that new text message. And you type in, what on a standard keypad spells ChaCha, which is 242242," said Bostic.
Attendees of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival got to experience firsthand the real-life applications of texting and common short codes. ChaCha was the official text answers service for the event.
"So one of the things that we recognize is this very powerful new feature also comes along with it, kind of a challenge in educating people on what they would use this for, how to get started with it. Because if you just present somebody that you have this new service where you can ask any question and get the answer back, when you start from there and you say, 'So what question do you want to ask?' Sometimes it's a little bit, maybe overwhelming, to decide where to begin. And what we're doing is aligning with events like Sundance where people are showing up from all around the world and all around the country, that have a specific passion. They're in a new place where they're looking to get to specific activities or events, such as a film that's starting, that they would like to get information about. So we become kind of the virtual information booth, if you will, for people that are landing there at Sundance," said Bostic.
In addition to discussing creative ways to educate the public on the mobile service, Bostic also shared how the service is being used in education.
"We've had a lot of schools and teachers embrace this because they see it as a way to more efficiently connect students with people when they need help. Actually, case in point, we've got an alliance with Indiana University where their students can actually do a...get help from a guide with questions. And we're actually facilitating connections up to the librarians at the universities. So, if you're an IU student, you can ask a question and instantly get connected up to an IU librarian, who otherwise, you might not be going in to see. And they, obviously, have a lot of resources that aren't nearly as utilized anymore as they used to be. So we're helping actually to re-introduce some of those knowledgeable people back into that equation," said Bostic.
CBS 11 News wanted to know what was next for this new use of texting. We asked the president and co-founder of ChaCha.com if he was looking to expand beyond the U.S.
"With just having launched our first mobile product January 3rd, we think international expansion is probably best moved out towards late 2008. Probably when we will start expanding into our first countries external to the U.S. And we're currently working through the multilingual and technology implications for that kind of a move. Um, you know we've got a lot of different things that we're working on, so I'll just kind of leave it at that. But we definitely have this sort of multilingual, multinational offering," said Bostic.
If you want to get in on the text messaging revolution, you can have a link sent directly to your cell phone, via text message, for the mobile edition of KTVA.com or for the mobile edition of CBSNews.com.
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