Communication: Messaging and its Impact

Communication: Messaging and its Impact

Humans are very social beings, and we thrive on communication and interaction. It is what has helped our species evolve distinctly from all other species. Over the course of time, communication has evolved from pigeons and foot soldier delivering messages to being able to see someone’s face thousands of miles away in an instant.

The last century or so have been the most important in the full evolution of the communication media that is today. First came telephones and then gradually it evolved into electronic mail, messaging and then VoIP today. All of these are still used today, but messaging has become a sort of redundant form of communication. Superfast internet speeds and development in mobile technology have made it easy for people to communicate quite effortlessly.

Text messaging used to be all the rage in the early 2000s and it is still a standard feature on most mobile phones. It has now become a platform for advertising and notifications. Companies and even individuals can use this feature to send out mass text messages. This feature is called bulk SMS and there are many services which offer this feature.

The essence of this service is the ability to promote news about new offers and deals, along with informing people of certain alerts. Companies may need it for more than just one purpose. Telecom companies use them to send out promotional offers and push better tariffs via these messages. Transportation services such as the railways send information about the PNR status and seat confirmation to passengers. It is used by educational institutions and banks. The latter utilizes it to send out account balance and transaction details, and this works even on phones which have blocked all access to SMS. Educational institutes like colleges and schools use it to give information about holidays and reports.

There are multiple subscription services that these companies offer and some of which include dedicated numbers, reporting, tracking services and comprehensive data recording.  Some services allow multiple account usage and sending.  These websites are almost automatic, if companies want their customers to be very aware of certain products and constantly reminded of it, they can opt for certain services that allow delivery of the messages during a set time of day, and day of the week.

There are algorithms that can do the calculations and ensure delivery to the recipient. Certain services also provide a sort of gate-keeping server system, which is responsible for message delivery in case of heavy traffic. A new feature that allows services to send shortened URLs to customers. These are used to denote information about websites and companies can use this feature to send links promoting new products or website sales. As shortened URL means fewer characters used, this means more characters can be used to convey and deliver a message regarding the URL. In terms of responses and feedback, this type of short URL has a much better rate than that of a longer one. The internet has simplified these services and one can now easily send text message online at the push of a button.