Why text?

Text messaging is a quick way to keep in touch with people for personal or business purposes. With text messaging, you can chat with a partner by typing on the keyboard and reading what they type on the screen. Many text messaging products can work with your mobile phone’s text messaging (also known as SMS or short message service) so you can chat with people who aren’t at your computer. So why not pick up the phone and talk?

It’s faster than email and phone calls. And you don’t have to pay anything to send text messages. If you need to chat with someone briefly or ask a quick question, it’s much less intrusive than calling someone. As with most technologies in development, there are several types of text messages available and each is incompatible with the others. But don’t let that stop you from trying it. The main text messaging products are ICQ (www.icq.com), MSN Messenger (www.msn.com), AIM (www.aim.com) and Yahoo Messenger (www.yahoo.com).

by the way (by the way…)

Each is free and easy to download, install, and register. You can locate your “friends” by searching an online directory by their screen name, email address, name, or phone number. Once you get used to it, texting can be extremely addictive. As you continue to use text messaging, you’ll learn to abbreviate words and sentences. When you leave an online chat, you can say BRB (I’ll be right back), I’m afk (away from the keyboard), or TTYL (Talk later). See the glossary below.

Some text messaging products are starting to offer voice and video chat. The future of digital communication is an integrated product, as voice, video, interactive text messaging, and email are all effective means of communication. In the future, you will be able to switch between text, voice and video with ease. Until then, we’ll continue to use different methods for different communication needs 🙁

Glossary

🙂 Smiley face. it means someone is happy

😉 Winking smiley face.

🙁 If someone emails you this, they’re probably not having a good day

By the way – by the way

FYI – FYI

FWIW – For what it’s worth

In my humble opinion – In my humble opinion (or IMO)

AUNT – Thanks in advance.

WRT – Regarding

LOL Laughing Out Loud

ROTFL – Rolling on the floor laughing

AFK – Away from the keyboard

TTYL – Talk to you later

CYA – see you later