OMG: Text messaging turns 19 this week.. and this is the Brit we have to thank for our sore thumbs

~ ! ~ Happy Birthday to You - SMS ~ ! ~ Yay ! You are turning into 19 years old this year. But yet, it's still HOT in the sense that SMS still contributes a big portion of revenues to the operators. Don't believe? See yourself. :)

Text messaging turns 19 this week but what few people know is that the first person to send one was in fact a British engineer.

While many might have assumed it would have emanated from some high-tech office in Silicon Valley, California, it came from an office in Newbury, Berkshire.

And the man who sent it was Neil Papworth who aged 22 texted Vodafone director Richard Jarvis at a staff Christmas party the full greeting 'Happy Christmas' - not, note, 'Happy Xmas'.

Mr Papworth sent the SMS (or Short Message Service) from his work computer to an Orbitel 901 handset on the Vodafone network and thereby set off a revolution in the way we communicate, date, work and network.

'I was a young engineer working on new communications technologies. We thought SMS was a clever way for a company's staff to send simple messages to one another,' Mr Papworth told the SMS & Mobile Messaging Association at a gathering to mark the 15th anniversary.

'I'd never have predicted that it would spread into the consumer world and become what it is today. At the time it didn't seem like a big deal.'

And ever since that December day in 1992 the number of texts has grown and grown giving rise to an entirely new vernacular.

What would life now be without OMG, LOL, TTYL and 'cya l8er'? And - heaven forbid - emoticons?

For many teens, who have never known life without a mobile phone, the world pre-texting seems inconceivable.

One phone per family? In the hall? With the whole family wanting to use it? How did that work?
But now landlines and snail mail are long gone, pagers and the fax machine were over before they began, and the world has been left texting, tweeting, chatting and IM’ing into oblivion.

Still, the take up of texting was slow.

Considering the first was sent in 1992, messaging didn’t become commonplace until the early 2000s.

In fact, in 1995 mobile phone customers sent only 0.4 messages on average each per month.
Post 2000 however things changed and texting took off. Some 8 trillion text messages will be sent in 2011 - or over 15 million each minute.

The biggest texters are from the subscribers in the Philippines who text an average of 27 messages each day.

In last year alone SMS texts generated $114.6 billion in global revenues.

That’s just the beginning, according to the experts, who estimate that mobile networks will earn $726 billion from SMS text messaging over the next five years.

While some may resent the little messages for causing a demise in verbal communication, for many the humble text is a quick route out of an unwanted chat.

‘If you call, the conversation can go on and on. With texting you can just say “Meet me here in ten” and you’re done,’ Rachel Claire, an avid texter, told Mail Online.

Source: By KATIE SILVER on 7th December 2011.

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