August 16, 2012

Why we love text messaging

Posted in messaging by Lisa Leitner

From a 21st century point of view, text messaging might look like an old technology. With the revolution of apps you read headlines like “Text messaging is dead” or “Messengers kill SMS” on tech blogs every now and then. However, fact is that the long history of text messaging is one of the reasons why we regard texts as a reliable and pleasant way of communication. Our sympathy for text messages is so great that we might also say: we love text messaging.

Why we love text messaging and mysms

 

A survey conducted by Acision found that 92 % of smartphone users still send text messages. This makes texting one of the most widespread methods of communication in the world. Also, against all odds, SMS usage is increasing with about 8,000,000,000 texts being sent every day.

 

Text Messaging Differences I – Women vs Men

Female vs male usage of text messaging

While both obviously love text messaging, they use it for different purposes. Men send texts for practical reasons: It’s fast, you can avoid nasty phone calls and come straight to the point. Women use texting to deepen relationships. On average, their texts are longer and contain more emotional messages. 54 % of all polled women said they text their beloved “I love you”-messages to cultivate human relations.

 

Text Messaging Differences II – Young vs “Mature“

Young vs old usage of text messaging

Also, the purpose of texting is different across different age groups. While 18 – 25 year-olds send about 133 texts a week mainly to their friends, 55+ year-olds use text messaging to stay in contact with their family. Very interesting fact: Only 19 % of under 25s use services like Skype or Twitter on their mobile, but 94 % of them send text messages.

 

The main reason people prefer to send a text rather than using another kind of communication is reliability and trust. 46 % of respondents claimed that texting is more reliable than other messaging services and 69 % said that they would be lost without text messaging. Other reasons why we love text messaging are its immediacy, speed of delivery and reach.

 

While sending a message via a social media platform feels less immediate to many smartphone owners, text messages often elicit instantaneous responses. Internet psychologist Graham Jones says: “People today are also compartmentalising their messages as they all have a specific purpose. Email is being used much less for personal communication and much more for business, whereas social networks tend to remain a medium to message friends and peers, sometimes on a one-to-many basis.”

Also “Text messaging remains a functional communication tool, but still with a personal aspect, which could explain its longevity,” he continues. “You can say things in text you wouldn’t necessarily say on another communication tool. Although there has been an influx in new broadband-based messaging services, which people are certainly experimenting with, people are differentiating services according to their need and using them as complimentary services as opposed to stopping usage of one or another messaging service.”

 

It’s great to have a choice, and it’s great to rely on a service; a service that lets us connect with our family and friends on a very personal level, is fast and reaches out to every phone all over the world. That’s why we still love text messaging.

 

Why do you love text messaging? Let us know in the comments.

 

 

August 8, 2012

mysms Insights: Our New Office in Graz, Austria

Posted in mysms news by mysms

As we‘ve already mentioned in our last mysms insights blogpost about our new office in Sunnyvale, CA, we also moved our headquarters to a new office in Graz, Austria. On a very summery Friday in June the whole team packed their traps and left the old mysms masonry.

packing our things in the old mysms office

Busy bees in the old mysms office

Packed with all our belongings we moved to a very stylish and completely new office in the South of the city. We carried, we schlepped, we packed, we unpacked, we cleared out, we assembled and at the end of the day we were exhausted and happy. The result is nothing to sneeze at. Look and see!

 

Chill out area new mysms UT11 office

We love our new chill-out area

This is our chill-out area, where we relax, have coffee and discuss ideas. Pretty comfy, don’t you think?

 

mysms development team

Our developers @ work

This is where the magic happens 😉 – our development team, who makes sure mysms works properly and builds new features and apps for our users.

 

mysms meeting room

Video-conferencing in our new meeting room

In our two meeting rooms we come together, brainstorm, discuss concepts and skype with colleagues and partners all over the world.

 

Our slogan, logo and values cover our walls and represent the spirit of the team.

UT11 slogan

UT11 logo

UT11 value cloud

 

In a nutshell, we love our new office and feel at ease with it. If you are curious and happen to be in Graz one day, feel free to stop by! 😉

 

 

August 2, 2012

mysms launches globally

Posted in mysms news by mysms

We’re experiencing exciting times here at mysms! A couple of weeks ago we officially launched our mysms apps globally and since then we haven’t slept a bit. A whole lot of new users all over the world have joined us and many international tech blogs covered our story. We are very happy and grateful about the massive support we’ve got from all of you! To let you all take part in the happenings around mysms of the last two weeks, we’d like to present you what’s been written about mysms on international blogs and social media.

 

 

mysms in the US press

Gizmodo says that mysms “gives texting a lot of the benefits of higher tech forms of communication”, is “a nice little service” and “seems to work pretty well”.

 

The Next Web calls mysms the “iMessage for the rest of us” and states that “WhatsApp will likely be given a run for its money here”.

 

What the Frenchies say about mysms

“If you’ve ever experienced the convenience of iMessage […] and wished that you had it on your non-Mac and non-iOS device you’re in luck; this is where mysms comes in” and „sounds pretty good to me“, says Liliane Nguyen from übergizmo.

 

mysms is best in app test in Germany

In a messaging app test of the German tech magazine Computerbild, mysms outperformed iMessage, Whatsapp, Chat On and Yuilop. We were ranked highest in operability, security and overall results. Awesome!

 

Additionally, Martin Weigert from Netzwertig says he “likes the path mysms opts for“ and thinks that our apps have “high potential”. We must admit, we really enjoy people praising us like that 😉

 

Massive mysms buzz in Indonesia

We were very pleased to discover quite an impressive buzz about mysms coming from Indonesian blogs. It’s a pleasure to hear that they consider mysms to be “useful” and “convenient” on the other side of the world!

 

Great International blog posts

Also, we are greatly honored that bloggers from countries with languages we have absolutely no clue about made the effort to write about mysms. In Russia they say that “Mysms: бесплатный сервис обмена сообщениями для iOS, Android, Mac, Windows и Chrome”, in Greece they think that “Συγχρονίστε τα SMS μηνύματα στο cloud με το MySMS” and our Chinese friends write “MySMS:类iMessage的跨平台短信同步服务”, – we reckon this must be extremely positive 😉

 

Social Media buzz from you guys

Besides all these great blogposts, we paid most of our attention to you and your opinions you shared on several social media platforms. Some of your tweets and posts made us so happy that we’d like to share them here on our blog:

 

 

 

 

Of course, we haven’t only listened to the praise about mysms, but are also very thankful for all your constructive criticism! We take all your opinions seriously and hope you will continue sharing your thoughts about mysms on our GetSatisfaction Page. Thanks!

 

 

July 25, 2012

Share Your Happiest Moments with mysms Messenger

Posted in mysms news by mysms

We recently launched our mysms Messenger for iOS, promising you to develop multimedia features in the next version. Now here it is, with the new version you can send and receive pictures and share your happiest moments with your family and friends. Let them be near you, even when you’re away and make them happy with a snapshot you took with your iPhone.

 

mysms message with pictures and files attached

 

It goes like this:

I. Sending pictures from mysms for iPhone

To send a picture to a mysms friend you just:

1. Click on the iPhone Photo Button Button next to the text field of your mysms message.

2. Choose whether you want to take a photo or select one from your camera roll.

 

attach photo to a mysms message

 

3. Next, pick the picture you want to send.

4. Insert your recipient and hit send.

 

 

II. Sending pictures and files from mysms Web, Chrome, Facebook, Windows or Mac

You can also send multimedia messages from your desktop computer. It’s mere child’s play, you just:

1. Click on the Paperclip button Button next to the text field of your text message.

 

attach a photo or file to a message in the mysms web app

 

2. Choose the desired file format of your attachment in the new window. (If you are asking yourself why you can’t send files from your iPhone, that’s because there’s no file manager on your iPhone. Sending files works only in our web and desktop apps.)

3. Next, pick the picture or file you want to send.

4. Insert your recipient and text and there you go!

 

It’s as easy as that. Altogether you can send 4 images per message, 10 MB maximum per attached picture. Enjoy the new features of your mysms Messenger and feel free to give us feedback in the comments.

 

July 19, 2012

mysms Insights: Our New Office in Sunnyvale, CA

Posted in Just for fun, mysms news by afeiner

The last month has been an exciting and busy time for the mysms team. We launched our mysms Messenger for iPhone, we packed our things and moved into a new stylish office at our headquarters in Graz, Austria and we started a satellite office in the heart of Silicon Valley, precisely in Sunnyvale, CA.

Favorite place in the office - the sunny terrace

Favorite place in the office - Martin and me on the sunny terrace

This is the first of two blog posts where we want to share with you some insights and pictures of our two new offices.

Plug and Play Tech Center is a global accelerator located in Sunnyvale, CA.

Plug and Play Tech Center is a global accelerator located in Sunnyvale, CA.

 

Why Sunnyvale? Not (only) because it’s sunny!

Being part of the initiative “Go Silicon Valley” of the Austrian Economic Chamber, we were one of 14 lucky startups that got selected for the program. We are now sharing the space in our Pavilion with five other Austrian companies that currently work here.

mysms is one of six companies currently working at the Austrian Pavilion.

mysms is one of six companies currently working at the Austrian Pavilion.

It’s only been two weeks now since we have opened the doors to office at Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale. But I can already say we love the sunny weather, the open-minded people and the energy and innovative spirit that’s in the air.

 

What has happened so far?

We successfully fought the jet lag, met tons of other entrepreneurs, and went to exiting events like MobileBeat. But our story here has just begun, we’ll keep you updated.

 

Some of the over 30 international companies that are located at PnP

Some of the over 30 international companies that are located at PnP

Hope you enjoyed the journey and be prepared for our next blog post on our brand-new super-stylish office in Graz.