In a result that should surprise nobody a study by Pew Internet has found that teenagers find quick messaging systems such as instant messaging and SMS the best way to communicate amongst themselves, while e-mail is best for communicating with adults and other authority figures.
“In focus groups, teens described their new environment. To them, email is increasingly seen as a tool for communicating with “adults” such as teachers, institutions like schools, and as a way to convey lengthy and detailed information to large groups. Meanwhile, IM is used for everyday conversations with multiple friends that range from casual to more serious and private exchanges.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean that IM on mobile phones will be a raging success, but it does give a good idea of what teens want from communication technology. They want it to be quick, easy, personalizable and able to communicate with multiple people at once (adults want the same thing, of course, but are less willing to learn new technology). SMS fails on the last two, and MMS fails on all but the third, so there is room for a communications technology to take off in the mobile space. In January last year Microsoft filed a patent to allow custom emoticons to be sent in text messages by relating them with a string of characters, which would allow SMS to become more personalized…the patent office hasn’t decided whether to accept the patent and MS has drawn a fair bit of flak over it.
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