Most of all, it is popular because it allows people to communicate with one another, which after food and shelter is about the most basic of human needs. We may not have much to say (for proof of that, check out one of the many books or Web sites dedicated to text jokes), but we love to talk.
In that, the text has much in common with many other hugely successful new technologies. Nobody planned the Internet, but it succeeded mainly because of e-mail. The telephone allowed us to chatter away to people we already knew. The car enabled us to get to see people more quickly. The desire to gossip, although rarely acknowledged, is one of the great driving forces of human technological progress.
Texting, unlike other new technologies, even has that rarest of things, a business model. They charge for it. The phone companies are raking in a fortune, and so too are software and infrastructure providers such as Logica Plc and CMG Plc. Without the "everything's free" culture of the Web, the financial history of the late 1990s would have been very different.
Contrast that with the billions invested in Web sites, in e- and m-commerce and on third-generation mobile licenses. Those technologies were mostly pushed by venture capitalists and big corporations. They were top down, not bottom up. And mostly they were spectacularly wrong.
Finacial gurus got it wrong
The corporate and financial elite thought that people wanted to use the Internet to buy dog biscuits or arrange a mortgage over a Web site. But actually what people want to do is send a flirty e-mail to the girl sitting three desks away, or make contact with old school friends they haven't seen in 30 years. Those other Web sites all lost a fortune.
Likewise, the corporate and financial elite thought that people wanted to download Titanic and watch it on the screen of their 3G mobile phone. But what they really wanted to do was send texts, and make phone calls from the train to say they'd be home in 10 minutes. The billions spent on 3G licenses and infrastructure looks to have been mostly wasted.
What should investors conclude from this story? Not that nobody should ever invest in new technologies. But they should learn that successful technologies emerge from a fog of uncertainty and confusion. They are chosen by customers, not imposed by companies. If more people had remembered that, may of the mistakes of the past few years might have been avoided.
Oh, and by the way, a belated HNY 2 U.
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