December 16th, 2013 – Textter is a new startup aiming at restructuring the way we approach texting. What’s new and what’s old in the world of texting.
“Textter gives people a more personal form of text communication,” said Carlos Cueto founder of Textter. “It works more like a real conversation, where you can’t just edit the things coming out of your mouth until they sound perfect. It’s more honest and straightforward, and people are going to react to that.”
We have other products in development, in which we will roll out over a series of stages. Obviously, user feedback will steer our direction.
A recent Pew Research study showed that 9.8 trillion text messages were sent worldwide in 2012. 80% of the world’s nearly 5 billion mobile phone users text. Globally, text message use is increasing, even in the rate of calling goes down. In the US alone, the average cell phone user sends or receives 35 SMS messages a day, with the average teen sending a whopping 3,400 a month.
As smartphones take on growing popularity, text messaging is actually rising rather than disappearing. While only 43% of smartphone users make calls from their devices, more than 70% are frequent texters. And with smartphones beginning to take over for traditional computers and laptops as the primary vehicle for internet access — as of 2011, 25% of internet users only had regular access via their mobile devices, and by 2016, smartphones are predicted to be the main source of internet — the face of texting is changing, too.
New web-based and app-to-app mobile services are replacing the role of regular SMS texting. Free messaging and international connectivity makes apps — the most prominent of which being Whatsapp — increasingly popular.
According to Ovum, a communications research firm, mobile providers will have lost $54 billion in revenue-decreased subscriptions to texting plans. Whatsapp is already taking over some of that business, reaching 250 million active monthly users earlier this summer. And Facebook, too, has a mobile messaging product it hopes will replace traditional texting. But there are still 20 times as many texters as Whatsapp users, and 5 times as many texters as total Facebook users, not to mention mobile users.
Compared to Facebook and Whatsapp, though, Textter is the only company with a genuinely new product to accompany the advantages of free, web-based text services.
“There is nothing new or special about Whatsapp — or any other messaging platform out there. The Live Messaging System really represents a paradigm shift in text-based communication. Textter is a fun and incredibly fast way of chatting that works on multiple platforms from desktop to mobile, and everything in between.” Says Joe Fatora
Especially among teens, a broad range of general conventions, and not all of them are considered positive. The various mind games involved in finding the “right” thing to say, for example, lead to confusion and frustration. One Bringham Young University study suggests that extensive editing is an indication of lying, confirming what many angsty teens already suspect whenever they see the “typing” sign on the screen, but have to wait and wonder what is happening on the other end of the message.
About Textter
Textter aims to show a new approach to texting. Founded by Carlos Cueto in 2013, Textter is headquartered in Miami.
