Seriously. It’s not that I don’t like the communication, I really appreciate that you’re reaching out to me. I just don’t understand why we’re holding ourselves to this outdated technology.
Character limits, a lack of support for “read” and “typing” detection, difficulty in sharing conversations between devices, generally dubious encryption and security, reliance on a separate protocol for any content other than raw text, and reliably dysfunctional group messages are all holding SMS way behind many of the services that are begging to be used instead.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand why SMS was and still can be useful. Almost all cellular devices support it, most plans now come with unlimited or effectively unlimited texting, and it isn’t everywhere that has readily available data service. But all that does is make it a great back-up. We don’t need to use it by default in places where 4G service is taken for granted and everyone and their dog is walking around with the newest generation iPhone/Android device!
We’ve admitted to ourselves that texting has problems before. GroupMe is an app that came along to soothe the problems that always seemed to show up when sending group texts. It works using a combination of SMS and mobile data, offering a hybrid of the two services. And people use it all the time! So let’s take a deep breath, and make a switch that gets rid of all of the other problems.
Behold, Facebook Messenger. Messenger allows me to send texts with as many characters as I want, and has a standardized character set to boot! I can easily view and send messages on all of my handheld devices, as well as on my computer. I can talk to one person or many people, and I can easily see when they are typing or have seen my messages. I can customize individual conversations, create nicknames for group messages and group members, mute and even remove myself from conversations if I want to. Sending pictures, videos, gifs, locations or voice recordings is built right in, and bots are on the way. And everything is sent over the Internet using HTTPS, the security protocol you trust for online transactions and banking, AND they even offer end-to-end encrypted messaging if you want to be super secret.
And if that doesn’t convince you, then the next time you don’t have somebody’s number, tell me how easy it is to just send them a message on Facebook. So please, let’s make the switch. Please stop texting me.