Why Do People Still Text
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@Dashrender said:
Exactly so we have what we have today. So if in the end we will end up with what we have today, what's the problem? If you're simply telling me that you wish people would stop using SMS and migrate non urgent things to IM, any IM instead of SMS - I have to ask.. why? what difference does it make?
Yes. So that alerts can be alerts and we don't have to react to every trivial message as if the building is on fire. IT always talks about how we never can get away from work, we can never shut down, we can never not be on high alert.... that's why. Because I don't want to spend my life staying at a device to see if the person sending me an alert is actually alerting me or if they are asking what I want to do for dinner tomorrow.
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@Dashrender said:
The only reason I can think of is so you can turn notifications back on for SMS because you know people will only use SMS for emergent things... I'm here to tell you, that will never happen.
So how do YOU handle being alerted? how do you know when it matters and when it doesn't?
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I know you keep saying you're not saying to replace with email, but you do have to pick a single, one, uno consolidated platform that everyone will content to for ubiquitous access.
Well, here is the thing... that's one of my pro-email arguments. Email is universal. SMS is pretty universal, but not to the same level. Right now, no one is picking just one. So I don't think that "having to" holds up. Clearly we don't have to. We had one that was universal and people chose to splinter. Maybe the underlying problem is the idea that we should have only one. Even though having many is horrible.
But ubiquity doesn't exist today. Lots of people don't have email. Lots of people don't have SMS. Lots of people have a little access to one or the other or both.
He wasn't talking about them being ubiquitous across communication types. He's taking about the fact with IM you have to find out which IM network they are on, then what their ID is etc. with SMS all you need is their phone number.
Yep, It doesn't matter what kind of phone you have, what carrier you're on, where you live.. anywhere in the world.. if I know your phone number I can SMS you.. it may not be free if I SMS an international number... but I can still do it simply by knowing your number... and I know it works for EVERYONE who has a cellphone.
That's just not the case with anything else except email... so frankly, while you're not abdicating for email to be the replacement - I really think you should be! It's the second most ubiquitous platform out here, possibly the first.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
And it's not really that big of a problem just is in Scott's own world!
Am I truly the only person out there in IT that is ever in need of being alerted AND has family that talks on text? Again, this seems like I'm being pointing out as the edge case for being completely normal. I can't always be the edge case, that's just not possible. Especially when it is in random directions of high tech, low tech, rural, city, etc.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Exactly so we have what we have today. So if in the end we will end up with what we have today, what's the problem? If you're simply telling me that you wish people would stop using SMS and migrate non urgent things to IM, any IM instead of SMS - I have to ask.. why? what difference does it make?
Yes. So that alerts can be alerts and we don't have to react to every trivial message as if the building is on fire. IT always talks about how we never can get away from work, we can never shut down, we can never not be on high alert.... that's why. Because I don't want to spend my life staying at a device to see if the person sending me an alert is actually alerting me or if they are asking what I want to do for dinner tomorrow.
That really just sounds like an issue of not having good work/life separation even in the electronic world. Don't use the same phone for work and personal. If you have to at least setup different notification tones for the two.
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@Dashrender said:
Yep, It doesn't matter what kind of phone you have, what carrier you're on, where you live.. anywhere in the world.. if I know your phone number I can SMS you..
But that you can or that you do are not the same. If one person is harassing me, I can block them. When it is socially acceptable to page people for normal conversation, you cannot. Not acceptably, anyway.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
That really just sounds like an issue of not having good work/life separation even in the electronic world. Don't use the same phone for work and personal. If you have to at least setup different notification tones for the two.
That's what I said. I want better work/life separation. I don't want to have to carry multiple devices, always be on high alert, etc. Two tones, okay, that might work, but two devices, that's not okay. We are getting worse not better there.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Other than automated alerts from things like servers, why do you need paging at all, if it's like you said for emergencies? why isn't calling good enough?
Well I'm in IT so automated alerts are my bread and butter. Calling is bad because I need information in writing. Sure, sometimes voice is okay. But if I am driving or can't hear because it is loud, or I just can't hear well, or the person on the other end can't speak clearly.... I need everything in writing to know what to do. In IT this is super critical. People speaking are way too likely to not be clearly understood when you are relaying critical information like a server name, or a street address or whatever.
But the big deal isn't that since you should always have email for the details. Its just the "I can't always answer the phone, but I can see that a page came in."
So we're back to wanting a whitelist function in the email client that allows notification if an email comes in from a specific address. This will be a much easier thing to provide than trying to get the masses to stop using texting for non emergent things.
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@Dashrender said:
So we're back to wanting a whitelist function in the email client that allows notification if an email comes in from a specific address. This will be a much easier thing to provide than trying to get the masses to stop using texting for non emergent things.
I agree and I've seen companies do that. Problem is is that paging, in theory, is a level above and beyond that. It allows true emergency pages - like from a hospital or something, where someone only has your phone number. Or they have your email but are not the emergency whitelist person. In the past, anyone could alert you, but people didn't do it frivolously. It's become socially acceptable to page everyone all the time.
What do doctors do these days?
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@Dashrender said:
I want a cell phone less for those locations and more for when I'm out and about.
Exactly isn't that what cell phones are for?
That was my point - additionally Scott was talking about his provider providing VOIP on the device when the device couldn't get good cellular single, but he was only offering assured good cellular signal when he was at specific known good locations, i.e. work or home.
My suggestion of the Asterisk was the wrong approach because Scott's right, people want a single device that works everywhere, and t-mobile is working to provide that by providing the VOIP solution to their service. My retort is that VOIP doesn't solve the real problem, sure it solves it if you have bad cellular connections at home and or work, but those places are places that provide many options to you already since you're in a known static location.... That is why I asked about using VOIP in places like Starbucks.. that's when the use of VOIP would be extremely good to have, because if the normal cellular network doesn't work, and the VOIP network doesn't work at Starbucks either.. then you're just SOL and not connected, i.e. no better off.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
OK and because you don't want to take SMS away, then you can't solve this problem - because you can't prevent people from using text messages.
Right, that's the issue, because people use SMS instead of email or IM, we now need another paging system for paging because the paging system has been stolen from us
And that one will be co opted as well once people find out how to get message there to get their 'important' ones through. It's a never ending cycle.
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@Dashrender said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@Dashrender said:
I want a cell phone less for those locations and more for when I'm out and about.
Exactly isn't that what cell phones are for?
That was my point - additionally Scott was talking about his provider providing VOIP on the device when the device couldn't get good cellular single, but he was only offering assured good cellular signal when he was at specific known good locations, i.e. work or home.
My suggestion of the Asterisk was the wrong approach because Scott's right, people want a single device that works everywhere, and t-mobile is working to provide that by providing the VOIP solution to their service. My retort is that VOIP doesn't solve the real problem, sure it solves it if you have bad cellular connections at home and or work, but those places are places that provide many options to you already since you're in a known static location.... That is why I asked about using VOIP in places like Starbucks.. that's when the use of VOIP would be extremely good to have, because if the normal cellular network doesn't work, and the VOIP network doesn't work at Starbucks either.. then you're just SOL and not connected, i.e. no better off.
It pretty much works anywhere you can get WiFi, which is the awesome bit. Sure you can use standard VoIP too, but that doesn't work over a lot of carrier signals.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
This isn't true - you don't know it's gotten there unless you get a recipient receipt, or a read receipt. In the mean time all you know is that your mail client delivered the message to your outgoing email server.
You know that it has gotten off of your device. At least any device that I know verifies this. Because it knows that the transfer was successful. It's only the first stage but it is a level of confirmation that SMS does not have.
Clearly this hasn't been a problem, otherwise people would be complaining to their carriers and they would find a better solution.
Why, anyone who understands the limitations knows that the problem was solved before it arrived. We have email for people who care. That's like complaining that your boat doesn't drive well on the highway. No matter how much you complain, no one is going to turn their boats into cars, you can already buy a car for that. If people keep trying to drive boats on roads.... that's not the boat maker's problem.
OK and because you don't want to take SMS away, then you can't solve this problem - because you can't prevent people from using text messages.
And it's not really that big of a problem just is in Scott's own world!
I agree with you - This is a problem for Scott, and perhaps IT personal in general that want to only have their device beep when it's a truly important message. But the masses don't get messages from servers indicating they are failing. so they just don't care.
I'm sure there are third party vendors who have an app for your phone and something you can install on your servers to send to that app.. then he can allow that one, and only that one app to make noise and he'll know it's critical and that he needs to answer it... lol
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Exactly so we have what we have today. So if in the end we will end up with what we have today, what's the problem? If you're simply telling me that you wish people would stop using SMS and migrate non urgent things to IM, any IM instead of SMS - I have to ask.. why? what difference does it make?
Yes. So that alerts can be alerts and we don't have to react to every trivial message as if the building is on fire. IT always talks about how we never can get away from work, we can never shut down, we can never not be on high alert.... that's why. Because I don't want to spend my life staying at a device to see if the person sending me an alert is actually alerting me or if they are asking what I want to do for dinner tomorrow.
See previous post of mine
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
OK and because you don't want to take SMS away, then you can't solve this problem - because you can't prevent people from using text messages.
Right, that's the issue, because people use SMS instead of email or IM, we now need another paging system for paging because the paging system has been stolen from us
And that one will be co opted as well once people find out how to get message there to get their 'important' ones through. It's a never ending cycle.
Ah no, because you can block them instantly. It's only when it is family and friends and strongly considered social inappropriate to block them that it is a problem. If it was people at work, blocking would be obvious and repercussions would be likely.
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@Dashrender said:
I'm sure there are third party vendors who have an app for your phone and something you can install on your servers to send to that app.. then he can allow that one, and only that one app to make noise and he'll know it's critical and that he needs to answer it... lol
I'm using PagerDuty. But the amount that we have to pay to get Paging functionality back, and we lose some of the old functionality, really sucks.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
The only reason I can think of is so you can turn notifications back on for SMS because you know people will only use SMS for emergent things... I'm here to tell you, that will never happen.
So how do YOU handle being alerted? how do you know when it matters and when it doesn't?
I probably get around 50 text a day, probably less... I don't get so many that I ignore them when I hear them... You on the other hand probably get 1000 texts a day.. so I can see the problem you have.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
And it's not really that big of a problem just is in Scott's own world!
Am I truly the only person out there in IT that is ever in need of being alerted AND has family that talks on text? Again, this seems like I'm being pointing out as the edge case for being completely normal. I can't always be the edge case, that's just not possible. Especially when it is in random directions of high tech, low tech, rural, city, etc.
I guess I don't have family friends, etc that just 'chat' on text... they generally have a specific question and prefer a timely (non email delayed) answer. I'll normally answer a text within in minutes.. an email might be hours.
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@Dashrender said:
I probably get around 50 text a day, probably less... I don't get so many that I ignore them when I hear them... You on the other hand probably get 1000 texts a day.. so I can see the problem you have.
Oh no, I get relatively few. I'm very big on moving people to other channels and no extra alerts because I need real alerts to get through. I'm sure I've gotten 50 in a day, but I use texting as little as possible and respond slowly to being texted so it discourages it. I really do respond via email and do other things to slow it down.
I get crazy numbers of messages per day, but I do manage to keep the text on the low side.
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We've been chewing on this all day, do we have any conclusions for a summary post or something?
