Is Photo Messaging Overhyped?
As wonderful as I think camera phones are, I’ve never been as big a fan of picture messaging – where people just send images back and forth between mobile phones. This seems like a weak reason to use a camera phone, as it’s not often that people just want to communicate with each other by images. It certainly doesn’t seem like a replacement for SMS text messaging. There are plenty of benefits to camera phones, but just doing picture messaging doesn’t really take advantage of the camera phone’s power. Now, a new study from the Zelos Group is suggesting that picture messaging is already on the decline in the US. It turns out that significantly fewer people today are interested in picture messaging than a year ago. Of course, there are a number of possible explanations for this. Picture messaging still isn’t that well implemented, which may have caused a lot of frustration with those trying to deal with it. However, it could also be a situation where the novelty goes away after you take a few photos. As the experience gets better and easier, and as more applications show up that make better use of picture messaging, it’s likely that usage will rebound, though not necessarily for simple direct person-to-person picture messaging.
