You have a Text from the Pope

No Joke, the Pope plans to use text messaging to reach young catholics.

News Story from Reuters

In case you don't know the Catholic Church does not exactly embrace change. So that makes this an interesting, if not significant, event. Text messaging as a communication channel is a big deal. An undeniablly big deal. I'll stop short of saying it is as significant as the telephone, but it's close and has uniquely interesting aspects to it.

An awful lot of UE design goes into products that are oriented towards communication, and many of them have been so called "Killer Apps." [A Killer App is something that is so popular that it drives the adoption of your platform, for example Email and the Web Browser driving adoption of the internet]

From the User Experience point of view, here's a list of things that are interesting about Text Messaging

1. Texting can not be overheard by people around you, unlike a phone call. It's worth noting that texting first became popular Japan and Europe, where people can live in high density cities and the average person spends a lot of time in public places. Texting was an amazing way to have semi-private interaction.
   
2. It is really oriented toward short interactions, unlike Email and most phone conversations. People text one another one-liner jokes. Or they tell someone something that does not require a response, for example "I'll be late."
   
3. You can communicate without having to actually engage in a phone conversation. I was surprised to discover this, but I think it is true. Sometimes a phone conversation is too intrusive in one's life. And once someone has you on the phone you can't be sure how long they'll keep you. I went to an on-line forum frequented by young people and posed this question "What do you like most about text messaging?" The most popular answer given was "You don't actually have to talk to the person."
4. At any time you can receive a message from a friend or loved one. You can't always answer a phone call. But whether you are in a business meeting or a college class room you can usually read a text without interrupting anyone else. Most people I think would say this provides a lift in your day to know someone was thinking of you. You can probably reply surreptitiously as well.
   
5. Texting is very popular among young people. Among people that are 25 and younger texting is very popular and there's little doubt that it is a channel that can be used to reach young people. The Pope's decision to use it shows that, but so does voting for American Idol via text. Future generations are literally growing up with it as part of their lives.
6. A text-based conversation is limited by the keyboard and character limit per message. In general texting conversations are made up of short messages because entering text is cumbersome on a phone keypad. Smartphones with full QWERTY keyboards may be changing that. Also note that text messages are NOT guaranteed to be delivered by most carriers, AND a message that is longer than 160 characters is split up into multiple texts that are delivered separately. These two together really cut down on the length of each message that is sent back and forth.