Now while reading the title of this write-up, you might be thinking what must have entered in my mind that i have chosen this topic, which may be catchy for some, irrelevant for some, and so on.
Everyone sends text messages, for communicating, keeping in touch with old pals, for informing people about locations, updating about some news, to exchange greetings, or even for fun, and many more reasons.
To add up a few facts, the CTIA survey 2009 states that
- More than 1.5 Trillion Text messages were sent in 2009,
- Almost 5 billion Text messages sent per day.
This is a very mind blowing figure in itself.
The year 2010 also saw a great fall in the prices of text messages in the competitive telecom market; as a result there was a great boom in the sms incoming and outgoing rates in mobile phones. Sms hence became cheapest communication method, far cheaper than voice calls.
Udaipies use messaging services to the extreme, specially the youngsters. I, being a regular sms (short message service) user often come across many of the messages from various origins, popularly termed together as “Forwarded messages”, mostly pre-generated from internet or creative sources and are just forwarded to people for information or fun purposes.
Many of the messages were popular throughout the year or for a part of it. To give a quick wrap up of the 2010 top messaging trends, I hereby list few of the topics that will keep 2010 a much remembered year.
- Sardar jokes were replaced in majority by Santa and Banta. Good to have two imaginative characters, instead of cracking jokes on an active part of our country and society.
- Despite of the blackouts (telecom companies charging extra money per sms) on special occasions such as holi, diwali, new year, etc, the Udaipies have found a smarter way to deal with the situations. Now be it diwali, holi, valentine’s day, rakhi, or any such expected event, wishes and greetings are sent in advance, ranging from a day before to almost a week before.
- The year saw a little less inclination of people towards the so called Religious Spam which claimed good luck if passed to many people and worst ever luck if the message was deleted. A FeelGood moment to see Udaipur realising what the truth is.
- When Udaipur witnessed rains, daily updates on the levels of the famous lakes Pichola and Fateh Sagar were top blockbusters of the season. Inch-by-inch update was conveyed throughout the city, the chain ended when the lakes finally overflowed.
- Next chapter was jokes and shayaris. An existing sub-part of a combination of both, PJ (which meant silly jokes, generally in poetry form) were much circulated.
- Specially the year saw spread of series messages, generally the abovementioned PJs’, most remarkable of which was on the daily television soap CID.
- Near the release of the south Indian blockbuster flick ROBOT, the focus of Udaipur shifted from all the jokes and poems to messages based on Rajnikant.
- Last but not the least, messages based on two songs that were most popular throughout the year- Munni and Sheila were also seen entering the inboxes very often.
- The current topic of the messages has shifted apart from all, to new year resolution and greetings.
Team UdaipurBlog too wishes its readers a very happy and prosperous New Year. 🙂