PT Insights

Mar
17

Texting is the new texting

David Leavitt

Several members from the Powell Tate team are down at the South By Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. They'll be sharing their insights from the festival here on this blog.

Most innovation in the digital communications space is about speed and size. Faster computers. Smaller computers. Mobile phones that give users access to a library of hundreds of thousands of programs.

But sometimes it's the simplest ideas that prove to be the most transformative.

The most useful products coming out of SXSW this year are among the most basic and (for the most part) use technology that was available years ago: group texting apps for mobile phones.

GroupMe, GroupedIn, Beluga and other group messaging apps, the hot trend at SXSW this year, let people create groups of friends/colleagues/family. Users can instantly share text messages, photos and even call all members of their customized group at once in a conference call.

Yes, that's it.

Sure, email accomplishes many of the same things (you can start an email conversation with multiple people, each of whom can "reply all" to the group). And email has no word-count limits or photo restrictions.

But when you're on the go and meeting friends, nothing is more convenient than texting. Especially in crowded areas with weak cell phone reception. Your message is also more likely to be read immediately via text than email – a text message is read within 4 minutes while an email could take up to 48 hours, making texting 720 times faster.

Among the youngest mobile phone users, text messaging is the mostly widely used digital communications tool. And older users are texting more than they ever have.

As a result, it's only natural that the latest trend is to nurture that love for texting with apps that help us do it more efficiently and with a richer experience.

Comment(s):