New technology isn’t placing restrictions on our communications in the same way that the technologies of old did. Emails can be unlimited in length, web pages can be stuffed full of content and the majority of mobile phones can now carry more SMS messages than you can shake a stick at.
The reason for this is down to the advancements in in-built computer memory and the expansion of the data “cloud”. Mobile data is no longer restricted to the size of a SIM-card, so companies are fairly free to make their messages as big as they want – within reason.
SMS messaging, so-called because it stands for Short Message Service – denoting the best example – used to be a communication method completely characterised by the size of the message being sent. Marketers, as well as friends, were largely restricted to sending 160 character messages only. If they went over this, their message would be split into two, mostly angering users and possibly arriving in two-halves, should they not have enough mobile signal to retrieve the whole message at once. This was certainly not very effective at getting a message across.
Today though, smartphones have largely removed that restriction. Mobile memory allows advertisers to send messages of nearly any size, including web links, phone numbers, dates and addresses, as they see fit. There’s no more half-messages arriving; no more need to say ‘u’ or ’2′ instead of ‘you’ and ‘two’. The freedoms generated by the improvements in SMS memory capacity mean that SMS advertising is more effective today than it has ever been.
SMS software and email marketing software only makes managing SMS communications even easier. These applications still make users aware of their word count, allowing them to really think about how much they want to say, questioning whether it is clear enough – as well as bundling in a host of other useful operations. Such features include tracking, importing contacts and saving templates.
It seems somewhat ironic then that with with today’s seemingly limitless technological boundaries on character counts that some people are so enamoured with short messaging services like Twitter. Although this may well suggest that short really is sweet after all.
