Introduction to text messaging

Why send text messages?

Text messaging is a quick way to stay in touch with people for personal or business reasons. With text messaging, you can chat with a colleague by typing on the keyboard and reading what is written to you on the screen. Many text messaging products can work with cell phone text messaging (also known as SMS or Short Messaging Service) so you can chat with people who are not at your computer. So why not just pick up the phone and talk?

It is faster than email and phone calls. And you don’t have to pay anything to send a text message. If you need to chat with someone briefly or ask a quick question, it is 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 one is free and easy to download, install, and register. You can locate your “friends” by searching an online directory for their username, email address, name, or phone number. Once you get the hang of it, texting can be extremely addictive. As you continue to use text messaging, you will find yourself learning 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 to you later). See the glossary below.

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

Glossary

🙂 Smiley face. It means that someone is happy

😉 Smiley face with a wink.

🙁 If someone e-mails this to you, they are probably not having a good day

By the way, by the way

FYI – For your information

FWIW – For what it’s worth

IMHO, IMHO (or my opinion)

TIA – 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

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