Short text messages add to danger of information overload

Don't look now but a solitary vice is taking Europe by storm: short text messaging from mobile phones. In August, 560 million text messages were sent in the UK, according to the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) Association, more than 10 times the 50 million recorded in May, 1999.

Worldwide, the number of short text messages sent to mobile phones this month will reach 10 billion, compared with one billion only 16 months ago, according to the GSM Association.

That works out at nearly two for every person on the planet, though most of the world's population don't have a telephone, let alone a mobile. Text messaging is now more popular than e-mail (currently running at 10 billion posts a year), even though it is much younger as a recreational activity. The reason, presumably, is that text messages are shorter and sent more frequently from a wider user base (mobiles) than emails, which are usually transmitted from a personal computer.

IDC, the IT research firm, predicts that e-mail traffic will reach a "staggering" 35 billion a day by 2005. If present trends continue, text messaging will be far bigger. Like it or hate it, text messaging is the fastest growing communication phenomenon of all time. There are two interesting facts about the growth of the short messaging system (SMS), which are also shared with e-mail. The first is that success was achieved with minimal spending on advertising. It's hard to think of a single advertisement urging me to SMS a friend. What happened was that supply created its own demand. Once the capacity to deliver messages instantly and cheaply was available, the message spread round the world by "viral" marketing, or word-of-mouth.

Viral marketing was unintentionally invented by Netscape over six years ago when it made copies of its browser freely available over the Web, a decision that led to tens of millions being downloaded within months.

This lesson has yet to be learned by the so-called dot.com companies selling to the consumer, which have crippled themselves with huge marketing costs to establish their new brands. The difference is they are selling old economy goods over the Internet rather than digital products like e-mail that are intrinsic to the Web. However, this problem won't last much longer: not because dot.coms will have found a solution but because they will have stopped calling themselves dot.coms.

They are now reinventing themselves as software engineers or providers of merchandising solutions in order to have any chance of crossing a venture capitalist's threshold before they are shown the door.

The second interesting factor is what effect short messaging will have on information overload. Overload has been talked about years but it is only now starting to bite. The problem initially was mainly "static" overload - the fact that there was so much information on the Web that it was difficult to know where to start to look.

That problem is even worse now but at least it is static - you don't need to browse if you don't want to. Static overload has always been a problem in the sense that there has always been too much information in the world to absorb. The information revolution simply brought an age-old problem to the desktop.

But "dynamic" overload - the tidal wave of e-mails, now joined by short messages - is different. It is aimed at your screen and demands a response - often instant - and is now threatening to become counter-productive.

E-mailing quickly became a tool for competitive advantage because of the way it could cut response times, instantly disseminate information, and cut through artificial corporate layers created by geography and bureaucracy.

Now it is different. Managers are finding they can't cope with 100, even 200 e-mails a day: everyone in the company wants to send them a blind copy of what they are doing and outside organisations and individuals can get through to them immediately without going through the secretarial filter. Employees now send e-mails to colleagues sitting next to them rather than speak so they remain on the record and aren't the victim of a memory lapse.

It has got to the stage where busy executives have stopped opening all their e-mails. One US businessman admitted to the Wall Street Journal that he had 1,059 unopened "carbon copy" e-mails.

Another confessed he had gone back to using the telephone or voice-mail because it was more personal. Communications that aren't recognisable aren't even opened. They have become a new kind of junk mail. This is a sea change, because with letters, at least you knew someone was opening them.

Some managers now employ more not fewer secretaries to cope with e-mail overload. Others print them out, hoping to go through them later - a resolution that soon gets broken once a few more hundred e-mails have arrived.

No one has yet found an answer to e-mail overload, except to make sure that you answer every one you open immediately - a resolution that inevitably leads you to open fewer in the first place. What will happen when text messages - now the plaything of the younger generation - seep into corporate culture can only be guessed at.

In theory, they are lethally efficient. They go straight to the person you want to reach, they are concise, and can be read in a meeting without disruption and instantaneously responded to, but they will add yet another layer to corporate overload because they will be in addition to all the e-mails, voice-mails and letters already received.

Goodness knows what will happen when executives start getting 100 short text messages a day on top of everything else. The only sure thing is that the communications revolution will end up with less not more communication.