Five years from now...text messaging will replace web sites.  I don't believe that.  I had a meeting with a vendor today and we were discussing text messaging and uses in health care.  It was a good discussion and one thing that was stressed is that text messaging is for very small discreet messages or interactions with a user.  It won't replace a web site but it can support a web site strategy.  One of the advantages is that it is easier to, in some cases, use your phone to interact with a site than to log on to the Internet and then a web site and then interact with it.  Convenience is an advantage but there is a lack of user interface and it's difficult to supply user feedback or correction.  So if the task is small, like recording a single piece of numeric data or being sent a reminder, text messaging works great.  If the interaction is complex and involves several pieces of data text messaging is not a good medium for the interaction.

Like Marshall McLuhan says, “The medium is the message.”  To create a text messaging application, you need to consider the medium, its benefits and its constraints.  Then select a project that benefits from the medium and could not be done as effectively in some other medium.  Work with the process and not try to impose a technology on situation and force a new process.

In another meeting there was a discussion about using Internet technology to accomplish a goal but the methodology was from another medium.  The idea was to use the internet but in a way that would be better accomplished in another older technology.  The medium is the message and the medium should be part of the determination of the tools used to accomplish a goal.  You can use a screwdriver to hammer a nail but a hammer would be more effective for that task.  Why are we trying to hammer Internet nails with screwdrivers?