Texting.

I'm not sure you all know how much I love text messaging - do you? I believe I've been texting since about 1999 or 2000. Back then it seemed to be pretty unpopular. A few people I knew used it and I had to introduce it to others (or force it on them). It is officially known as a 'short message service' or SMS for short (ba-dump-bump) and it now seems to have really hit the mainstream. Commercially SMS is a massive industry, worth over 81 billion dollars globally as of 2006. That seems big.

I was out with a former co-worker the other night and she mentioned that she hates texting. After the paramedics got my heart beating again, she thought a poll about texting might be in order. I thought it was a great idea, and the poll is up now (please vote)

The real reason to talk about text messages, for me at least, is to let everyone know that I'd love to hear from you via text (or any other method for that matter). It doesn't have to be long (I mean, it's called SMS for a reason), but maybe just to say 'hello', send me a joke, tell me traffic sucks, or that you saw someone on a bike get doored and thought of me.

Finally, though I can usually come up with the polls on my own (and this is the first instance of someone else suggesting a poll), I would be very very happy to entertain poll ideas from the t.c readership. If you have a poll suggestion, please let me know (by text). You could get some really rich data about a topic you're interested in. I often get at least 8-12 people for each poll - I know, it's as big as texting now.