Text Messaging

Clearly there is a significant divide in the opinions regarding text messaging, or ‘text speak’. In the first article, John Humphreys takes a very strong stance on the subject, claiming that texters are

“Destroying it [English language]: pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary. And they must be stopped." 

He also expresses much discontent with the OED’s decision to remove the hyphen from their latest edition. In the second article, John Sutherlands review of the text message phenomenon appears much more analytic than opinionated, and the third article attempts to refute John’s claims with statistical evidence.

Before I had even read the third article I already disagreed with John’s views, but it does a pretty good job of reinforcing my initial thoughts. To summarise John’s article; he believes and states quite strongly that the English language is being destroyed by those who have embraced text messaging. He also believes, wrongly, that the main opposition to this opinion is the view that:

“...language changes.

It is constantly evolving and anyone who tries to get in the way is a fuddy-duddy who deserves to be run down.”

I disagree with John’s argument not for this reason but because I feel he has misjudged the impact that text messaging has and will have, which is;

“Our written language may end up as a series of ridiculous emoticons and ever-changing abbreviations.”

I fail to see where he has drawn this conclusion from. Text messaging has been widespread as far back as the late 90s, and has had little or no effect on the language I read away from my mobile. Every other form of written communication that I read is still using proper English; newspapers, magazines, books, textbooks, blog posts, any successful website. I have been texting for around 10 years and have never caught myself slipping a ‘U’ or a ‘LOL’ into any form of written communication away from my mobile. Even when I am using text messaging, I rarely abbreviate or shorten words and take care to use correct punctuation, as do most of my friends. Perhaps it is just my social circle, but I do not know anywhere where text-speak is acceptable apart from when texting. 

Text messaging is designed to be short and precise, to be used when you are too busy to write a letter or make a phone call – it is an alternative to ‘proper’ communication, not a replacement. Perhaps when it becomes acceptable to use text speak in exams and newspaper headlines, John’s argument will be warranted. Until then, he is making a mountain of a mole hill.

Rise of Twitter

The 11 billion dollar idea

In just nine years, the masterminds behind the internet sensation that is Twitter have managed to turn their concept into a product that is tipped for an $11bn stock market floatation^[1]. Boasting an active user-base of around 200 million^[2] and even securing an entry in the Collins dictionary^[3], its clear that Twitter has become a part of the mainstream consciousness; but how did it get there?

Twitters origins lie in a “daylong brainstorming session” held in March 2006 by a small group of board members from the podcasting company Odeo, who envisioned a service similar to SMS messaging yet modernised for the internet age.^[4] The outcome followed suit; a collection of microblogs where people post their passing thoughts as 'tweets' and 'follow' other users. Imagine Facebook, but with updates limited to 140 characters and less invasion of privacy.

By the end of 2007, Twitter was processing 400,000 'tweets' per quarter, rising substantially to  100 million per quarter by the end of 2008. By February 2010, Twitter users were publishing an astonishing 50 million tweets per day.^[5] Many attribute this growth to the participation of famous figures to the Twitter circle – analysts claim Oprah Winfrey alone generated a 43% spike in visitors to the site.^[6] Before long famous figures from all sections of society were tweeting away, some of them causing major headaches for their PR teams; Chris Brown, Amanda Bynes and Helen Flanagan have found themselves in hot water after Twitter blunders, just to name a few.^[7]

The impact of the site has been profound - any successful media organisation now has a dedicated Twitter correspondent as do the heads of state in 123 countries.^[8]The reach of the Arab Spring protests is largely credited to Twitter^[9], which is described by Global Language Monitor as a “strategic weapon...which has the apparent ability to re-align the social order in real time, with little or no advanced warning.”^[10] In 2009 The Guardian revealed that the government was planning to teach children on new media tools including Twitter, a move which was condemned by the then shadow education minister Michael Gove - whose criticisms were rather ironically distributed to party members on Twitter itself via the Conservative Party's page.

Twitter usage reached new heights in 2010 when the first unassisted post was Tweeted from the International Space Station by astronaut T.J. Creamer and by November, up to 12 messages a day were being posted from @NASA_Astronauts account^[11]. These days everybody and their dog has a Twitter account; the Deli Llama tweets daily^[12] and the Bank of England recently held a question and answer session regarding the economy using Twitter as its medium.^[13] The real question is, can Twitter pass the test of time?

As revolutionary as it may seem, the track record for social networks in general is not a great one. Many other social platforms have experienced similar levels growth in the past before witnessing a mass abandoning from its users in favour of the latest social fad. MySpace, a veteran in the social networking scene, lost its place as web-users favourite way to waste time with the arrival of Bebo, an Irish social network, which users then dropped shortly after in favour of Facebook. MySpace and Bebo failed to update their interface and features until everybody had already left for Facebook, and by then it was too late. If Twitter wants to stay relevant, it will have to learn from the mistakes of the past top dogs or risk falling victim to the same capital flight of its userbase. Until then, happy tweeting!

^{[1]http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/science-technology/twitter-set-11bn-flotation-year-2270972
[2]http://mashable.com/2012/12/18/twitter-200-million-active-users/
[3]http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/twitter
[4]http://www.140characters.com/2009/01/30/how-twitter-was-born/
[5]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/7297541/Twitter-users-send-50-million-tweets-per-day.html
[6]http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9131935/Oprah_s_Midas_touch_gives_Twitter_a_43_boost
[7]http://www.closeronline.co.uk/2013/08/the-most-embarrassing-celebrity-twitter-mistakes-from-helen-flanagan-to-amanda-bynes
[8]http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/01/hail-to-the-tweet/
[9]http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2011/01/could-tunisia-be-the-next-twitter-revolution/177302/
[10]http://www.languagemonitor.com/2011/02/
[11]http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/jan/HQ_M10-011_Hawaii221169.html
[12]https://twitter.com/DalaiLama
[13]http://www.cityam.com/blog/1382090541/bank-england-launches-twitter-qa}