The Economist surveys the dearth of mobile text messaging in the US, and dissects the differences between this market and others where it has boomed. Meanwhile, a SJ Merc article describes an even worse possible fate: the advent of push advertising on mobile messaging. Although profiled CEO Nihal Mehta of Ipsh.net says "It's not spam - these are all opt-in campaigns", we've all heard this one before. The inevitable outcome of messaging at no cost to the advertising sender is the parting quote in the story, from a teen-age user: "My friends are easily offended by it, especially since it's strangers calling... I don't know how they found our number." It won't take much of this kind of abuse to keep texting stuck in low gear. If the carriers really want to stimulate usage, they had better figure out how to curb abuse quickly, as well as deal with the other market impedements surveyed in the Economist article and here.
7:20:28 PM