Text Messaging Turns 20 Years Old Today

It was 20 years ago today [Dec 3] that the first text message was sent. One 3 December 1992, an engineer working on the UK sent the world’s first short message service or SMS saying “Merry Christmas.”

PC World reports that: “Nowadays, cell phone users around the world send more than 7 trillion text messages per year. But in November, average text messaging per U.S. user declined for the first time, from 696 messages per month to 678 messages per month. This could be the first sign of shift away from the 160-character SMS, but certainly not its demise.

“The decline can be easily blamed on several factors: Web-based communications such as Facebook and Twitter provide an alternative to SMS, both through one-on-one messaging and through public or semi-private posts to large swaths of other users. E-mail is a major factor as well, given how easy it is to access on a smartphone.”

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