Morning Edition tech guru Mario Armstrong selected one innovation as NPR's technology pick of the year...and the winner is the humble text message.

Basically, he's saying that the campaigns deployed technology, including SMS, that the older and typically more politically active demographic may not have been familiar with but have now integrated into their everyday life's as a result.


Please Listen Here

Pew Internet & American Life Project
By Jon Brodkin , Network World , 12/15/2008

By 2020, mobile phones will be the primary Internet devices for most people in the world, according to a panel of experts, who also predict that Web technologies will probably not lead to increased social tolerance.

“The mobile phone – now with significant computing power – [will be] the primary Internet connection and the only one for a majority of the people across the world,” the Pew Internet & American Life Project writes in a new “Future of the Internet” report. “Telephony [will be] offered under a set of universal standards and protocols accepted by most operators internationally, making for reasonably effortless movement from one part of the world to another.”

Nearly four out of five experts agreed with this scenario, according to an online Pew survey which formed the basis of the report. Pew surveyed 578 leading Internet activists, builders and commentators, identified through various technology associations as well as an “extensive canvassing of scholarly, government and business documents from the period 1990-1995 to see who had ventured predictions about the future impact of the Internet.” A few of the experts polled were Nicholas Carr, author of the Rough Type blog and The Big Switch; Havi Hoffman of the Yahoo Developer Network; Michael Botein, founding director of the Media Law Center at New York University Law School; and several members of the ICANN board.

DECEMBER 15, 2008, from eMarketer

They have no use for irrelevant messages, that’s for sure. More than six out of 10 US high school and college students surveyed “never” or “hardly ever” read marketing emails, according to an October 2008 survey by eROI.

Though DMNews, Bokardo, and Skype & Harris Interactive have reported that email is a dying channel, says the report, speculating that students are now using email primarily to sign up for social networking sites and receive email alerts, the eROI study finds that:

... only about 36% of students use email alerts to keep up to date on what's happening on their social networks
... about one-quarter of students originally got an email address for social networking purposes
... one-quarter got an email address for the ability to buy online
... 81% got an email address for communicating with family
... 52% for communicating with friends

Overall there is a very minor increase in email usage since getting an initial email address. It appears, says the report, that students had a real and determined need for email when they first set up an email address, not just for the purpose of setting up a social network

My Comments

Nothing we didn't know here already, however I found the language ironic. Like when the majority say companies are not effectively 'speaking' to them 'personally' through email. That's the WHOLE point, this demographic doesn't receive any, or very few, 'personal' communications through email... so unless your 'speaking' to this group via text message or instant message forget it.

I'm 44 and even I get very few 'personal' emails anymore now that my mom has learned to text, and of course she still calls me everyday, her emails now are mostly jokes or conservative propaganda that's been forwarded (being Hillary's mobile consultant almost killer her). As a consequence, very few emails from marketers get my attention, none if I don't recognize the sender...I've just been abused for too long.

Email has a place for sure, we use email to communicate updates and news to our clients and others who've expressed an interest in receiving our information. However even that will become less and less as more people become comfortable getting the information they REALLY want pushed to them immediately...as opposed to marketing emails that need to be designed/ composed etc.

I swear I couldn't have written a more positive outlook on mobile marketing, explicitly in the use of short codes and text messages...it would've been like, "of course, you would say that!"

For example...

Marketers should look at SMS and see an opportunity to engage with a core customer base in a new and unique fashion. Short code marketing has the potential of a mass medium but requires a personal execution. Short code marketing, perhaps more than any other advertising medium today, is as simple as a conversation

Or this...

We believe short codes are at the fulcrum between traditional media and mobile media—creating opportunities for marketers and media companies to leverage the reach and consumption levels of traditional media to drive a more personal interaction and engagement through the mobile phone. This interplay will do more than drive engagement, though, as it will also help us better understand the efficacy of these traditional forms of media. In that regard, short codes will continue to be not just a medium, but also a metric.

My God, is it everything you've heard from us for the last 5 years?

Please get the full report here

From the WSJ online DECEMBER 8, 2008, 9:23 P.M. ET

By JOSEPH DE AVILA

Retailers eager to attract holiday shoppers are expanding their digital efforts to reach them this season.

Stores like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are using more text-message alerts to spread the news about sales. Online retailers like Buy.com Inc. are sending out daily messages on Twitter, a blogging site that uses short messages, to advertise the latest holiday specials. The Gap Inc., Target Corp., Sears Holdings Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. are pushing new mobile programs this year, too.

My Comment:

If you refer to our previous press release, this is exactly what we were talking about. What we also said, other developing your iPhone application, there is nothing these retailing GIANTS are doing that Interlinked Media can't do for your company... actually better in most cases.


Full article on the Wall Street Journal Here

Though 40% of parents who exchange text messages with their teen- and young-adult children say they have been caught off guard by high texting bills, the majority still say text messaging is the most cost-effective way to keep tabs on their offspring, according to a survey from AT&T, conducted by Synovate — via MarketingCharts.

The survey, which aimed to better understand texting behavior between parents (age 30+) and children (age 13-20), found that nearly three-fourths of texting parents (73%) think teens are more responsive to text messages than to other forms of communication, and 56% say it makes their children easier to reach.

In terms of message content, 79% of parents said they text their children most often to tell them to come or phone home, the most common type of parent-child text message. Over three-quarters (76%) text to work out logistical arrangements and 74% send kids a loving message via text.

Children say they text their parents most often to tell them when they're going to be home (88%), that they're safe (78%) and to ask to be picked up (75%).

Not surprisingly, children text most often with their friends, while parents text most often with their children, AT&T said.

The Parent Perspective

87% of parents say their child is on an unlimited text messaging plan.
50% of parents think text messaging makes them a "cool" parent.
55% say they have more frequent communication with their child by texting.
61% percent say text messaging is the most cost-effective way to exchange messages with their child, compared with phone calls, e-mails and instant messages.
53% of parents say their child taught them how to text (vs.42% of kids who said a friend taught them how to text).
33% of parents began texting for the first time so they could reach their child.