There isn’t a full report, but PEW Internet /American Life has a ‘PIP Comment’ out titled The Rise of Cell Phone Text Messaging. It is short and worth a read, but here are some numbers I found to be interesting:
Percentage of cell phone owners that are texters
Gen Y (18-27) – 63
Gen X (28-39) – 31
Young Boomers (40-49) – 18
Older Boomers (50-58) – 13
Over 60 types – 7
Percentage of age group that use cell phones
Gen X – 76
Young Boomers – 68
Gen Y – 68
Older Boomers – 62
Over 60 types – 60
According to the ‘Comment,’ ”[t]he findings come from a nationwide phone survey of 1,460 cell phone users…” Make of that what you will.
These figures above look very high, but perhaps not as much when you really consider what they’re looking at. One thing that they didn’t include is the percentage of the total population (not just cell phone users) that are texters. With some mathematical wizardry I deduced the following:
Gen Y – 43
Gen X – 24
Young Boomers – 12
Older Boomers – 8
Over 60 types – 4
These figures are lower, yes, but they’re not small enough that we should be ignoring them, especially with what we know about how phone trends move East to West. Bigger numbers are coming. Remember of course that statistics are statistics, but I think this is good for looking at general trends. We need to be reaching out to the Gen Yers (18-27), not only because we have a mandate to serve them (and they don’t deserve to be ignored) but also because they are going to be the people voting on our referenda in the not so distant future. What have you done recently to make them feel warm and fuzzy about the library?
This evening, I was approached with an interesting reference question. The patron asked, “How can I send an SMS to a mobile phone in Norway?”
Consider yourself warned: As SMS increases in popularity in the United States (it has already become fully integrated into the continents of Europe, Asia, and Australia) our patrons will have questions about it. There are statistics about SMS in the US which tell us use is on the increase, but that’s not how I know more people are using it. How do I know then? I nearly fainted when I recieved a text message from my mother one day out of the blue (even if it said something like “gdjjm”” – i don’t think she quite knew how to press the buttons to change letters).
If you want to get up to speed, or have some staff that need to learn about this here is a decent Introduction to SMS.
Previos posts on walking paper about SMS
Bonus SMS Links
Something struck me as my friends and I were killing time during the (god-awful aneurysm inducing) commercials before a film last night. We were paying absolutely no mind to each other (nor the commercials). I realized that we were all using our phones when one friend exclaimed to another, “My tetris is better than your tetris.” Looking up from my screen, I saw that we weren’t the only people on our phones.
I think that this anecdote affirms what Jenny wrote the other day:
A bet: if you’re under age 35, you probably will do just what the survey says and take your phone, use it during parties, and communicate while multitasking F2F (face to face). If you’re over age 35, you probably view this behavior as rude and you don’t want to be interrupted by phone messages (text or voice) during F2F parties.
A generalization that will naturally have exceptions, but I think we’re getting to the point where the U.S. is starting to catch up to the numbers in this article….
Meanwhile, there are reports of kids ignoring more than commercials.
This is a film that invokes awe, but totally fails to induce it. At the screening I attended, most of the young audience spent the second half text-messaging friends.[via textually.org]
Libraries have a significant opportunity to increase their cultural relevancy by responding to this information trend. How should we respond? A start would be having mobile friendly websites and reference availability via text messaging.
If you thought Reference by Instant Messaging was progressive, what do you think about Reference by SMS?
For those of you not familiar, Short Messaging Service (SMS) is the feature available on the majority of cell phones that people use to send not voice messages but text messages to other cell phones (or some IM services too). SMS is catching on in the United States. I phrase it this way because it is absolutely huge in other parts of the world. It is so big in Europe and Asia that they are making airline reservations via SMS over there. European broadcasters have made SMS voting a source of income and American Idol “received over 2.5 million SMS votes for their show. Jenny recently linked to a good article about SMS catching on if you’d like to read more.
Also, you might remember from a few weeks back that SMSers can query google with this technology. This is where libraries come in, no? I’ve been waiting some SMS integration in libraries for a while now. Even something as simple as Innovative living up to their name and offering SMS hold/overdue notices would make me happy.
A very nice colleague sent me an announcement from an Australian company, Altarama, that is now offering an SMS product for libraries to use for Reference. Excerpts from their site follow.
Altarama introduces Reference by SMStm at VRD 2004 in Cincinnati Complementing its range of products that enhance the reference function of libraries, Altarama announces Reference by SMS, the first service designed specifically to allow libraries to seamlessly expand their reference delivery methods to include SMS (“simple [sic?] message service”).
More commonly knows as “text messaging,” SMS has seen its popularity explode among students, business people, and nearly everyone else with a cell phone.
Reference by SMS provides a phone number specific to a library that can be advertised for sending text messages to the library, which are automatically converted and delivered to an email address that the library specifies. The librarians monitoring that email address create responses in their normal email using a plug-in tool designed to assist with short replies, and the responses are automatically converted from email to text message, and delivered to the patron’s cell phone. No new operating procedures are required!The page also states that it costs libraries about $75 per month to use their service (after an initial setup fee, I’m sure). This leads me to believe that their pricing scheme could be $x per bundle of messages or something like that.
The only thing that I’m not totally crazy about is the email component to their system. Perhaps they thought an email plugin would be easier or less invasive for librarians but maybe it was just easier/cheaper for them to make. However, I’d rather see a small program that would pop up SMSs as people send them. This would really look the same as IM Reference to the librarians, so there wouldn’t be much more to learn*. The real gain would be for the user, who would have a reference librarian in their pocket. What a good way to make ourselves a bit more ubiquitous.
*Librarians might be forced to learn some SMS fonetic shortcuts because text messages can be a maximum of 160 characters. It is doubtful that this would be a huge limitation though. Software could either split longer messages and send them sequentially if there was the need. I bet people would mostly use SMS Reference for simple short things like phone numbers and directions.
My previous post reminded that I wanted to find a transcript of a great segment on NPR’s “On the Media”. Titled Generation Text it is a short conversation between two (big name) linguists, Geoffrey Nunberg and Naomi Baron. It was interesting because the two have different perspectives on the way younger ppl r writing. Below are two quotes from the show, but be sure to read it all or listen to it all [real audio]
GEOFFREY NUNBERG: The more you write, the better you write. The best way to learn to write is not to learn the rules or take courses. Just sit down and write. To that extent, I think you could argue that the kids who are now doing text messaging and email and, and IMs and so on and so forth, will wind up writing at least as well as and possibly better than their parents or than any generation in history.
NAOMI BARON: We know that children learn to talk because there are some people—we call them adults or older kids—who already know the system, and the younger kids pick up an awful lot of what we model for them. My question is not “Can you have a range of different registers -some informal, some formal, some texting, some essays that you turn in for class”—but “Are we modeling those more formal forms of writing that we used to?” And I don’t think we are so much any more.
google’s latest offering appears to be google sms. this makes me excited.
Proposed uses for the service, according to google, are:
-Get local business listings when you’re on the road and want to find a place to eat
-Compare online product prices with ones you find in retail stores
-Look up dictionary definitions to expand your vocabulary or prove a point
-Find other specialized types of information, as described in how to use Google SMS
To send your google sms queries to 46645, which is GOOGL on most phones.
As soon as I get into an area with cell service (i.e. not the library) I’m going to check it out.
misc
press release from google blog
how to use google sms
About two months ago I wrote about Yahoo! Alerts beta. Here is a followup to that.
For the past two months I’ve been receiving probably 15 text messages per day from Yahoo! One of these is a weather report for the next day, and the rest are ‘breaking news’ stories. While I still think the concept of this is great and important, I now think the content I’ve chosen is terrible.
Weather alerts
People love talking about the weather. If something ‘crazy’ is going to be happening with the weather, I usually hear about this from coworkers or hear random people discussing it. If this fails, I’m a big fan of looking out the damn window.
Breaking news
My news gathering habits are largely web based. I read newspapers infrequently (except for the local police beat, which I read religiously), and never watch TV ‘news.’ There are a number of periodicals I enjoy reading for news, but I’m not too fervent about keeping up with them. Using the web, I can largely ignore mainstream news and select the sources I like. I think I was too excited about the delivery of AP and Reuters headlines via text messaging to remember that I was going to be getting frequent bundles of crap sent to my phone. Not only were the headlines bad, they were often incomplete. British sources say a car bomb exploded on the Gaza Strip, injuring six people on Monday. Investigations are un and the like. There were a few standout headlines among reports of people killed in Iraq and turmoil in Palestine. That Clinton was having emergency heart surgery was somewhat interesting (although I’m not quite sure why). Also, I was watching a movie (at home) when the AP alerted me that a ‘mushroom cloud’ was spotted over North Korea. That was spooky and prompted me to a) text some friends and b) get to my computer for more info. I was confused as to why this was being reported three days after it happened at that point, and slightly relieved that there likely wasn’t a nuclear war going on.
There is different content available through Yahoo! Alerts beta and I might investigate it. I’m concerned though because I signed up with a throwaway account. I had no forsight. Now I’ve got to so some serious sleuthing to figure out how I’m going to login to delete the lousy alerts. Ouch.
When we’re offering text message alerts to patrons, let’s remember to make it easy for them to unsubscribe.
I’m sure every one of us has found a cell phone user annoying at some point, but the Huntington Beach Public Library must have been pushed over the edge. According to some news stories they have put in place a drastic fine schedule for disobeying their no cell phone use policy. After an initial warning, talkative patrons will recieve a $250 fine. It gets worse with the next offenses triggering $500 and $1000 fines!
While excessive, I can partially understand what they are up to. What I can’t understand is that included in their no cell phone use policy is text messaging. I don’t understand why patrons aren’t allowed to type with their thumbs and read responses if their ringers are turned off. Perhaps they think that if patrons are given an inch, they will take a mile and start forgetting to turn their ringers off.
I wonder if they at least have a zone where cell phones are okay? Like the lobby of the library, perhaps.
I’ve called the library twice to ask them some questions, but the administrative assistant hasn’t been around.
Usually I like to leave speculations about the place of upcoming technologies in libraries to Shifty or perhaps the Tamer. I’ve been mainly talking about the things I’m currently implementing in the library at which I work.
I’m going to have to make an exception for Yahoo! Alerts which is in beta presently. Yahoo! will send you information about topic that you’ve selected in various formats.
The least interesting offering from Yahoo! Alerts is alert by email. Getting a bit warmer is alerts by Yahoo Instant Messenger. Hot, however, is alerts by Short Message Service, always known as SMS. For those that haven’t used SMS, think of it as Instant Messeging, phone-to-phone. Through SMS one can send short (160 characters) text messages in real time. I’ve signed up for the “Breaking News” alert, and a local weather alert that will be delivered via SMS to my phone.
If you haven’t used SMS, it probably isn’t because you’re not a rich technocrat, but rather because of your age. Consider this, 47% of adults with children use SMS as opposed to 28% without children.
If you haven’t used SMS, you very well may in the future. Here are some stats from a company called InphoMatch which carries 30% of text messages sent in the US:
The total number of messages they sent in 2003 was 4 billion, they’ve done more than half of 2003 in Q1 of 2004. [link to stats]
One last number. The British youth marketing info company Mobile Youth says that people in the UK are sending 2 billion SMS messages per month. Wow.
I guess the numbers are fine and dandy, but the fact that Yahoo! is offering alerts by SMS is enough to set off the “libraries will need to get involved with this” alarm in my head. People are using this technology, and the numbers will increase. The challenge isn’t going to be getting patrons to adopt this technolgy because we’re interested in delivering information to them in this way. The challenge will be letting them know that we offer it. If we do.
I made a short post about SMS in libraries here a while back. I plan to follow through and talk to our ILS vendor about SMS next time I see them.
I leave you with this photo, taken at the local VW dealership:
Yoy may have seen the story going around today about a woman who, though texting, convinced the theif who stole her car to give it back.
Maybe we could use the power of text messaging to get people to pick up their ILL items. Innovative, I’m looking in your direction!
