The Text Messaging Revolution Has Begun

Some people say it started a while back, but at our house I saw it first-hand this holiday season. Our daughter (nearly 12) got her first cell phone. As contracts go, we actually put her on her own plan, as the "family plan" is up in a month - at which point we’ll all be moving to the new plan.

Since she’s on her own, I told her that she had 450 minutes for the first month - but wondered if that’d be enough. It’s 15 minutes a day, after all, and she and her friends have a way of dragging out conversations. Also, as an afterthought, I told her that I didn’t pick up the unlimited texting option ($10/mo), but that we’d look at it next month when the whole family comes over to the new plan.

Within ten minutes of her giving out her number to some friends, the new phone began DINGING repeatedly - DING! DING! DING! In short, text messages were coming in as fast as she could read them (and respond). We quickly came to a conclusion. She forked over $10 bucks from her holiday cash and I upgraded her plan.

One week later, here’s where we are: she’s spent less than 30 minutes TALKING on the phone - and 20 of them were a single call to her grandmother. However, she and her HannahMontanites have sent nearly 300 text messages to each other. 

What does this mean to magazine publishers? Only this: the next generation is the TEXT generation. You can either watch this happen from the sidelines or you can have your brand capitalize form it with programs like Nxttext, the first text messaging revenue generation program specifically designed for magazine publishers.