Every year or so you hear about some internet messaging technology that will "replace email," but obviously doesn’t and gets swept under the rug as fast as it came on the scene. This is because there is nothing out there can match the rock-solid decentralized nature of how email works.
There is one thing however that would, and that’s text messaging.
At present, traditional SMS text messaging is limited to 160 bytes/characters per message. If however a new PC-accessible standard were introduced that allowed for 1,000 character messages, and if major businesses supported it, this would give people a reason to ditch traditional email altogether.
Ponder this:
Let’s say wireless carriers did allow for 1,000 character SMS messages, and for any message over 160 that goes in your inbox, the phone give a notification saying, "Message over 160 characters, login to read at [carrier web site here]," where you login with a computer to read the longer stuff.
Now let’s say the major businesses you use all had the option to deliver things you could get in email direct to your cell phone instead. Bank statements, online purchase receipts, etc. All of it. (Side note: Yes, I know you can get the majority of that stuff now on smartphones, but I’m talking about plain SMS here.)
Everything is centralized to your phone. Your phone number is your voice, text and email address all in one.
Do you have any real need for an email address at that point? Probably not.
Drawbacks?
Yes, there are a few big ones.
No file attachments
Many people still need the ability to physically attach files to emails, and this is something SMS cannot do since it’s just text alone.
Somewhat centralized
You are tied at the hip to your wireless carrier when using a cell phone like this. I call it "somewhat centralized" because you can change carriers whenever you want, but you’re still always tied to a carrier and must pay fees to use them. Traditional email is 100% free and not tied to anything save for the service itself.
Some people aren’t comfortable giving out their cell phone number
When it comes to how public people are with their wireless number, some couldn’t care less who knows it while others guard it like precious jewel and may not feel comfortable getting things like bank statements on a phone.
Some people hate the phone company – any phone company
Everybody has a horror story about the phone company, and will continue to as long as phone companies exist. We only deal with them because we have to and not because we want to. To use a phone as a primary email address would be considered heresy to more than a few.
Doesn’t something like this already exist?
Not exactly.
Smartphones be they iPhone or Android can do it all – but your email address is still an email address. It is true you can "link" an email address to a cell phone easily, but both are inherently separate messaging systems.
What I’m talking about here is just plain jane SMS text with a much higher character limit, with your only inbox being SMS and nothing else. In addition, it would be universally accessible on all cell phones and not just smartphones.
If "SMS 1,000" Existed, Would You Ditch Email For Good?
I’m betting some of you would. You would probably happily give up the ability for messaging with file attachments and styled text for a one-for-all communication solution. Then again maybe you wouldn’t.
Leave your opinions below on what you think about it.
Technical end note: I’m well aware there’s no possible way existing wireless carriers could handle the sort of text traffic I’m talking about; this is just a "what if" scenario assuming the tech was here, universally accessible regardless of carrier and it worked.
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Your last four drawbacks are exactly why it will never replace regular email. Add to that, reading emails is much easier on a big monitor.
I don’t know that email is so “rock solid” anymore. The spammers have managed to jam up the system. Emails that are delayed or just don’t get through, blocked by antivirus or spam filters…it’s been a nightmare lately, at least for me.
I don’t think texting is necessarily the solution. But somehow, there must be a better way.
Yeah, uhmm.. no. I would never go for it. If you have used a non-smartphone device recently, you would agree. I don’t want to read anything but the shortest messages on my Samsung Gravity. The screen is too small to accomodate this, especially considering alot of people use email to get newsletters from multiple places. My Inbox gets roughly 100-200 emails per day, and reading all of them on my phone, and not being able to quickly click through them or click links in them would be a serious drawback. Also, you have to consider organization – I have multiple rules setup in Outlook to route specific emails to specific folders so I can easily see what needs to be read first, etc.. this wouldn’t be feasible on any low-end device using strictly SMS service.
I do use a non-smartphone, and per the messages over 160, this is why I noted larger messages should simply not be able to be displayed on the phone itself, but rather have an “exceeds 160 character limit, go to [carrier web site] to view.”
I do totally agree that without the ability to use message filters/rules it would be a nightmare to manage it all even if you only received 25 messages daily – but I disagree to consider it unfeasible as a potential way to handle messages on newer non-smartphones. Existing contact lists on even the crappiest prepaid cell phones have the ability to assign contacts to groups. I don’t believe it would take truly that much effort to offer similar sorting ability on incoming SMS messages.
I also completely forgot to think about how one would deal with spam using messaging this way. Probably wouldn’t be pretty and be 1999 all over again. Huge deal-breaker.
I don’t get it. Why? Email works. I have had my yahoo email address since the 1990′s. I have had 4 cell phone numbers since then as I moved out of state and changed employers (don’t forget a very large number of people have their cell phone provided by their employer). An Exchange-style synchronized email system is a requirement for most business users–I want my attachments stored on my company’s server and my laptop so I have them offline and have secure backup.
To me it seems change for the sake of change. Also, I get a LOT of emails that are a lot longer than 1000 characters. You would have to have some sort of threading system to replace email chains–which are a vital form of record keeping in the business environment.
Text messaging is a toy compared to email. It has it uses, but it lacks too many features to be of much use in a business environment.