And I thought the acronyms of the wireless industry were unwieldy! In the age of text messaging there is a whole new language to be learned.
Finally about a month ago I got up the nerve to inquire to my e-mail-addicted friend what LOL meant. She always uses it in her e-mail, other friends always use it in their messages … here I was thinking that it meant “Lots of Love” until one alarming day when a male colleague/acquaintance used it in a message to me and I realized (hoped) it meant something else. Needless to say she was “laughing out loud” at my inquiry. But that is OK. I am willing to learn.
Abbreviated vernacular and picto-symbols, otherwise known as emoticons, have their novelty and place in online communications, but when messaging goes wireless, instant-messaging acronyms reach a whole new level of importance. When dealing with character limitations, each letter of your message takes up precious real estate.
Texting is not just about being able to communicate with your kids, it is about bridging the gap as younger wireless users continue to grow up and enter the business world bringing their usage habits and skills with them (see last week’s column). Depending on how the technology evolves, it may become a more and more necessary piece of the business survival toolset … like being able to play golf (something else I am currently trying to learn).
It’s not just about communications evolution, it’s about increased productivity.
Case in point, earlier this year, textually.com (IMHO a good Web resource for text-speak glossaries and all things SMS) reported that British Gas asked its employees to communicate with each other via text message to try to cut time spent on the phone. Its 10,000 call center employees and engineers were asked to use “text-speak” when e-mailing and texting each other with an expected extra 360,000 customers a year able to get through to its phone lines as a result and cutting an average of 50 seconds from each conversation and message, which lasts an average of six minutes. The company planned to enlist younger employees to draw up a glossary of text terms.
An ABI study released last week cautioned that application developers should be careful to not put all of their eggs in the mass market basket by focusing on such things as ring tones, gaming, and SMS while neglecting the needs of enterprise customers. Agreed. But if we are creating loyal users, the two can nicely go hand in hand.
