The Text Message Turns 20 This Year

Text messaging has quietly helped lead the mobile revolution [2]. In 2011, it’s estimated that some 8 trillion text messages [3] were sent around the world. For the under-21 crowd, texting was even preferred to talking by 71 percent of respondents in a 2011 poll [4].

And what’s not to love about texting? It’s a discreet and incredibly simple form of communication that can pretty much happen anywhere, at anytime — except in the driver’s seat, in many states. In fact, its early simplicity in restricting messages to a 160-character count inspired the founders of Twitter to follow its lead by implementing a 140 character count limit [5] as they developed the now wildly popular social networking service.

Getting a little ahead of the party, the Nokia Connects blog [6] is celebrating the birth of the text message, which it dates to some time around Christmas 1992, when Neil Papworth [7] texted Vodafone director Richard Jarvis, “Happy Christmas.”

In honor of texting’s big 2-0, Nokia has gathered some fun facts about the technology, which has increased in usage, but not changed all that much in its features:

• Matti Makkonen, a Finnish engineer, is the inventor of texting. He came up with the idea in 1984, but hasn’t profited from the service because he never applied for a patent.
• The 160-character count limit was introduced by Friedham Hillebrand, a German communications researcher, because his research found that 160 characters was a sufficient length for average messages.
• Text messaging earns the telecom industry $114.6 billion a year.
• Texting has spawned a sub-language of English, with words like LOL, BRB and TTYL gaining in popular usage and everyday communication.
• The current record for the fastest text sent using the message “The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality, they seldom attack a human.” is 37.28 seconds.

How has text messaging changed the way you communicate?

For more on the 20th anniversary of text messaging, read the Nokia Connects blog [6]. And for more great content from around the web, check out BizTech's 50 Must-Read IT Blogs [8].