Only a couple of years ago, mobile phones were not widely used and those who used it were mostly businessmen who had to endure carrying the big bulky models. Now, almost everyone has his or her own mobile phone, and leaving the house without your phone is considered a major mistake.



Carrying a mobile phone is now considered not just ordinary but necessary to be able to communicate with friends and others. Aside from just making phone calls, mobiles can now be used for so much more, like taking pictures, playing music, playing games, sending e-mails, surfing the internet, and sending SMS messages. Short Message Sending, also known as texting, is when someone uses the mobile phone to send short messages to another mobile phone user over the telephone network.

The popularity of texting first spread rapidly in Asia, where high school teenagers started using text messaging as a more cost effective way of communication other than phone calls. As the trend grew, texting started to evolve into its own language, giving birth to abbreviations, slang and even driving the market to create phone models that are more suited towards texting.

It is easy to start texting as long as the mobile phone being used is capable of sending them. All the user needs to do is go to the proper menu where a message may be created or composed. Then the user needs to create a message by tapping out the letters and symbols on the keypad. Once the message has been created, the user just needs to select the receiver of the message and send it.

The charges for a single SMS vary according to the service provider. Despite the fact that there used to be no extra charge for texting when it first became available, the high number of people who used texting called attention to the trend when they started clogging the networks. Big businesses saw this as an opportunity to expand their empire by including texting in their list of services and started promoting the trend.

As the texting trend grew, it evolved into its own sub culture. The trend spread out to other generations beyond the realm of teenyboppers. People started using SMS to create jokes and graphics. Forwarded messages like chain emails were created and hoaxes, pranks, and even scams were also formulated on SMS.

Texting has evolved in several ways since then. One is the advent of MMS, or Multimedia Message Sending, which lets users send audio, video and image files with simple text messages. These allow greater personalization of the individual text messages. Even simple SMS were further personalized. The smiley faces and emoticons that can be added to a text message were enhanced, allowing people to insert more emotion to their messages.

Another mark of evolution in texting is its steady commercialization. Big companies have started to use text messages as a way to have their advertisements reach the consumer. Those with phones will no doubt receive at least one unsolicited advertisement on their phone a day.

There is no question that texting has come a long way from being a cheap alternative to calling. It is now the easiest way to connect to other people constantly and consistently throughout the day.