I had a couple of great conversations with people about SMS at the recent Politics Online Conference. That's what I like best about conferences — the interaction gets me thinking. It got me thinking and talking about SMS and here are my thoughts on the viral potential of SMS.

What makes a medium a good conduit of a viral message? Widespread use. 

First of all for SMS cell phone text messaging to be successful as a medium that encourages viral message spreading amongst a specific demographic, its use needs to be frequent amongst this demographic. I decided to take a look at different kinds of current and future users of SMS to see which demographics would seem to be large enough to encourage viral message spreading via SMS.

Different types of SMS users 

Everyday SMS users

• Demographic 1: 10 to 20 year olds.
  Viral potential: High
  Example: Parents will get their kids unlimited SMS plans so as not to incur high voice plan charges.
  This seems likely and there’s also a small possibility that these kids will continue to use SMS when they grow up – I personally doubt they will because superior technology will be widely available by then. In any case, I think this definitely is or will be the most important SMS demographic.

• Demographic 2: low-income individuals and people working in environments with no internet access.
  Viral potential: High
  Example: Used successfully in organizing immigration reform demonstrations in Washington DC.
  SMS may work well with demographics that do not have regular access to email and IM. Email and IM are more powerful and more functional, and home broadband users and office employees have access to both of them during most of the hours in a day. 

Occasional SMS users

• Demographic 3: People needing reminders of important personal events.
  Viral potential: None
  Example: Reminders for people to take their weekly/monthly medication.
  While this usage is interesting (and, Ajit tells me, available via Google Calendar ) it has no viral potential.

• Demographic 4: People needing critical notifications.
  Viral potential: None
  Example: Server offline status triggering the sending of an SMS to a network administrator
  Also useful, but again with no viral potential.

• Demographic 5: People needing to communicate in loud environments
  Viral potential: Medium
  Example: People that work in loud environments such as bars, concert venues or construction sites, or people temporarily in one of these types of locations.
  There is gimmicky encouragement of SMS use at some concert venues (e.g. text 54543 for your message to appear on this jumbo screen), but I can’t see this causing more than a tiny dent in overall usage. However people that like to go clubbing/barhopping as well as people that work in these environments are all or will all become active users of SMS. Dodgeball does a good job encouraging usage amongst this demographic.
  

• Demographic 6: People needing to communicate in strictly quiet environments (excluding the 10 to 20 year-old demographic).
  Viral potential: Low
  Example: People in a library, in a class, in a theatre, or at a meeting or event.
  Chances are people are rarely in these environments for a long enough period of time to turn them into avid SMS users.
  

• Demographic 7: People wanting to use SMS for quick web service queries while on the road
  Viral potential: Low
  Example: Google SMS (which I use) and Twitter’s new API.
  Another closed interaction taking place here, with little viral potential.

Infrequent SMS users

• Demographic 8: Members of large groups that need immediate organization.
  Viral potential: Medium
  Example: Organize members of a group that do not have access to email/IM
  SMS can work well as a way to organize people in an outdoor setting, e.g. organizing a march once at the march. The difference between this and the Hispanic demonstrations is that it is my understanding that people actually got there because of SMS, they did not necessarily use SMS to organize themselves once they were there.
  

And … everyone else (i.e. most people)

• Most people not likely to use SMS frequently, and certainly not in a viral way
  Pretty much everyone else that doesn’t fall into one of those demographics falls into this category, and chances are you do too. Because of that I think we’re all very unlikely to participate in SMS viral message spreading. If we’re not at home with the medium, chances are we’re not at home with using it to spread the message either.

So is SMS going to be a great viral medium in the US?

I don't think so. Here's why:

SMS vs. Email – don’t put your money on SMS.
I think SMS is a cumbersome low-tech technology that’s already on its way out. Email and IM are much more powerful text communication technologies. Email forwards are the original internet viral medium. It won’t be long before we have cell phones and plans that promote the widespread use of mobile emailing and IMing (the iPhone is already taking things in this direction ). I think widespread use and availability of email and IM in cell phones is around the corner – 3 to 5 years, tops — and this is going to push SMS out the door.

What about the rise of Twitter and Google SMS and the new Twitter API?
With Twitter people can send SMS messages to a group of people. So people can tell me what they’re doing every 3 hours. Who cares? Who wants to know what someone is doing every three hours via a mass SMS? It’s unlikely to be that interesting and can turn into something pretty annoying . Twitter might work well for small groups of the aforementioned 10 to 20 year-olds to keep in touch, and as a tool with which to organize the aforementioned Demographics 1 or 2 but I can’t imagine it working beyond that.Then like I mentioned there’s the Twitter API announced today , but while this may sound cool, again I can’t see much viral potential in it.

But SMS works in Europe and everywhere else so why won't it work here?
Because most countries outside the US have SMS pricing models whereby you pay to send an SMS, but it is always free to receive it. In the US of A, either you subscribe to an SMS plan or you pay per SMS sent or received. In Europe and other places people most people pay a per minute cost for their cell phone calls, much like we’ve done in the past with land lines. For them, sending an SMS makes economical sense because it is cheaper than making a phone call. Here in the US, unless I have an unlimited text messaging plan, I’d rather use up my plan’s voice minutes than have to pay extra to clumsily correspond via SMS. My guess is you would too. Again, adoption = viral potential. Give me a simple cell phone with Blackberry capability for my personal email, and now we're talking adoption and significant viral potential.

The Verdict: Virally speaking, SMS is no YouTube.
But it does have good viral potential amongst very specific US demographics — 10 to 20 year-olds and amongst people with no internet access. I seriously doubt it will be used much at all 3 to 5 years from now.

What do you think? Disagree? Let me know, leave a comment! 

| Trackback URL |