Читать книгу Manage Your Online Reputation - Tony Wilson - Страница 9

The very first mobile telephones were put into New York City police cars in 1924, although cell phones or mobile phones didn’t become prevalent until the early 1990s (when some of them looked like, and were as heavy as, bricks). The adoption of this technology has been astounding and transformative, especially in the developing world; in some areas in Asia and Africa, the finance and development of land lines has taken a backseat to the adoption of mobile telephone infrastructure.

By the end of 2009, there were an estimated 4.6 billion mobile phones in use throughout the world. China has a staggering 786,000,000 mobile phone subscribers. India has more than 600,000,000 mobile phone subscribers and the United States has more than 285,000,000. Even less developed countries such as Pakistan (97,000,000 subscribers) and Nigeria (64,000,000 subscribers) have large and growing mobile phone markets.

Most cell phones manufactured since 2005 have the ability to use Short Message Service (SMS) or text message if the subscriber pays for it. Although anyone older than 50 might find the idea of texting with one’s cell phone ridiculous when one could just as easily phone the person directly, texting short messages is often used when it’s inconvenient or impractical to have a telephone conversation, such as during a meeting, when the surrounding noise (or company) makes a telephone conversation problematic, or if you’re a student, while in class. If you’re a parent and your kids don’t pick up their cell phones or check their voice mail, rest assured the kids will certainly check their text messages. Remember, you’re more likely to reach them with a text these days than a phone call.

Of all mobile or cell phones, 75 percent have text capabilities. SMS text messaging, where the sender is limited to 140 (or 160) characters, may well be the most utilized text data application in the world today, even more prevalent than email given its widespread usage in China, India, and other parts of Asia. In China, it’s estimated that 700 billion text messages were sent in 2007. In the Philippines, more than 400 million text messages a day are sent (142 billion text messages a year). Text messaging is so prevalent in India, that service providers text transit alerts, cricket scores, and allow for mobile billing and banking services to be performed via text messaging. Over the years, text messaging has expanded to include digital images, sounds, and video sent via Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).

There have been unfortunate social side effects of the use of texting on mobile phones. Driving while texting is one obvious example and many jurisdictions have banned all use of mobile devices while driving given that automobile accidents are more likely to happen when the driver is texting a message and not watching the road (duh). Another is the misuse of language that has evolved through the use of texting shorthand (e.g., lol, 2day, lmao, b4, gr8); changing English and other languages (e.g., in China, the numbers 520 sound like the Mandarin words for “I love you”).

Perhaps the worst social side effect from texting, and one that relates to reputation management, involves “sexting,” where teenagers try to impress (or entice) each other by sending either sexual content within a text message, or sexual images they have taken of themselves with their cell phones. What’s worse is when these private communications are re-sent to others; the sender (often being a teenage boy who received the “sext”) is potentially in possession of child pornography and subject to criminal prosecution. If re-texted to others, these sexts could well lead to convictions for distribution of child pornography. (Sexting is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 7.)

We can’t forget golfer Tiger Woods’ exploits (discussed in Chapter 3), that were exposed after his wife Elin found sexually charged text messages on Tiger’s cell phone. A few of Tiger’s girlfriends actually kept these text messages, eventually publishing them on websites and releasing them to the media. (Texts aren’t private, Tiger!)