What else can you do with SMS today?

The first short message in the world was born 25 years ago. What will you do with it today?

About 10 years ago, "SMS" was an essential tool for our daily communication. But now, "SMS" has become a way for us to receive all kinds of verification codes and notifications. However, when the world's first short message was born in Britain 25 years ago, no one expected that this thing would subvert the communication mode of mobile phones in the next decade, let alone that it was a big step in the history of human communication.

Image source: mirror1992 65438+On February 3rd, Vodafone UK sent the world's first short message to the mobile phone on the computer side through GSM network. Neil Paavos is a British engineer working in Vodafone and the first person in the world to send text messages. He sent this short message to the mobile phone of Richard Jarvis, the communication director of Vodafone, with only one simple sentence-"Marry Christmas".

Neil Papavo, source: Ladbible However, the successful sending of the first text message does not mean that this function is widely used. Due to the limitation of hardware and network at that time (sending short messages needs to be based on GSM network, which was not fully mature in 1992), short messages really spread to commercial and civil use after 1994.

Nokia E90, Source: YouTube With the equipment update of Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia and other mobile phone manufacturers, "SMS" has been applied to various countries and regions around the world. Even people of different levels, different colors and different countries can communicate with the outside world through simple typing and express their ideas. According to Statisticbrain of the United States, from June 2000 to June 20 17, the number of short messages sent in the United States alone increased from120,000 in 2000 to 78 10/0 billion in 20 17. In other words, in the 17 years of the development of smart phones, the number of short messages sent has increased by 60,000 times.

The development of mobile communication technology in China is a little later than that in foreign countries. China Mobile and China Unicom started to expand short message service on 1998. In 2000, the number of short messages in China exceeded 654.38 billion. From 200 1, the number of communication services in China reached18.9 billion, and reached the peak of 90 billion in 2004. However, with the rapid development of instant messaging tools in recent years, the number of "short messages" sent in China has gradually become slow. According to the data of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in 20 12, the number of mobile short messages sent nationwide reached 897.3 billion, an increase of only 2. 1% over the previous year, the lowest increase in four years. It can be seen that the emergence of instant messaging tools such as WeChat and iMessage and online social platforms has really affected our usage habits of short messages. Now, what else can you do with text messages?