I had an interesting discussion with a friend last night. He knows I’m looking into mobile marketing and fundraising and we talked about text messaging. The rates of growth for text messaging are mind boggling. A recent article in the Star-Telegram quoted a Verizon rep as saying that text messaging has increased 20% in each of the last five quarters.

Will SMS messages kill e-mail?

Here are some interesting things to consider:

• Unlike a computer, your cell phone is almost always with you. You can send or receive a text message at anytime. Most people still e-mail from a computer.
• SMS limits a person to 160 characters. It forces one to get to the point — no e-mail dissertation from your colleague who wants you to know every single thought in his/her mind about an issue.
• Kids are used to IM and text messaging their friends. Computers are a part of work and school.
• Text messages are not the only type of messages that phones can send. Pictures and video can be sent now.
• The rest of the world uses text messaging a lot more than we Americans do.

My conclusion is that e-mail will never go away. It’s too nice for those of us who are in the workforce. My Blackberry will handle both e-mail and text messages. Look for more phones like this in the future.

E-mail programs like Outlook will soon ship with “Send via SMS” or “Send to phone”.

The text messaging market will continue to grow. Its simply too easy to send a message via phone — especially when there’s no time for a conversation.

C u l8r — (That’s text messaging for “See you later”!!!)