SMS Text Messaging Makes History

Dan Gillmor mentions the SMS phenomenon in his book entitled, “We the Media” where he talked about the EDSA Revolution in 2001. I had just moved to the United States and one day in 2001, my friends and family were texting and calling me saying they were about to have the country’s second people’s revolution to overthrow the then president Estrada (he was later found guilty of corruption and now spends his time on house arrest). The people’s revolution was remarkable. Planning was almost nonexistent due to the fact that people were scared that the government might declare a martial law. They had to act quickly and the vehicle the people used to spread the word was SMS text messaging. How revolutionary is that?? Millions of people rallied and eventually, the President of the Philippines did not have a choice but to step down. The Filipino people won.

Now THAT is technology in motion.

I have been using SMS (short message services) since I was in high school ten years ago. Asia is known for having the most advanced cell phones and cell phone services before Europe or the United States. When I moved to the United States for college, I quickly searched for a U.S. cell phone company with SMS text messaging capability so that I could keep in touch with my friends back home.. and this was in the year 2000. Lo and behold, no one knew what I was talking about—except for T-mobile (they were called Voicestream at the time) and even then, they were only doing research and did not have an actual running service for consumers. I chose T-mobile and within a few months, they offered SMS text messaging to their subscribers. When they first started the service, you could text message anywhere in the world and the rates were the same. It was great. I was happily texting away and people who saw me in the streets were probably thinking I was playing a game in my cell phone as my thumb flew around the keypad of my cell phone. Unfortunately, cell phone companies got smarter and decided not to cover international SMS text messages and charge consumers five cents per message. Shoot. I had to find another way to keep in touch. Thanks to a myriad of social media web sites (which we will discuss in the future) I can keep up-to-date with my friends and family back home. I can chat with them online and even view a live video whenever we chat online.

It is amazing how far we have come in a span of ten years. Now we have the YouTube phenomenon, webcasts and social media web sites to name a few. Because of the media evolution, we even have citizen journalists we can use as news sources. Everyone is connected in some way or the other. Is this necessarily a good thing? Where do you think the media is headed? What do you think is the next big thing?