Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
pay a bill or transfer funds to a friend, the user simply types a text message that the
recipient is able to turn into cash at any M-PESA office.
For the past decade, Kenya's Agricultural Commodities Exchange has partnered
with Safaricom to provide information about crop prices to farmers via a text messaging
service. Another service, iCow, uses voice and text messaging to help dairy farmers keep
track of the gestation of their cows [31].
Counterfeit medicine is a serious problem in many African and Asian countries.
Ghanian Bright Simons came up with the idea of putting scratch cards with unique codes
on packages of medicine. After scratching the package to reveal the code, a customer can
text the code to a designated number to learn if the drug is genuine [31].
Twitter is a Web-based social networking service that allows its users to send out text
messages known as
tweets
. Tweets are limited to 140 characters because that's the max-
imum length of a cell phone text message. The service is popular because people who
want their friends to know what they are doing find it more convenient to post a single
tweet than to type a bunch of text messages. Many people also use Twitter as a blogging
tool; they make their tweets public so that anyone can read them. Other Twitter mem-
bers never post tweets, but they sign up to follow the tweets posted by other people they
are interested in.
More than 200 million people use Twitter, making it one of the most popular Web
services in the world [32]. Users posted 7,196 tweets per second at the conclusion of
the exciting World Cup Final soccer match between the United States and Japan in 2011
[33].
When carpenter Curtis Kimball started a part-time business running a cr eme br ulee cart
in San Francisco, he used Twitter to let people know the cart's location and the flavors of
the day. Before long, he had attracted 5,400 followers. Business became so good he quit
his day job in order to keep up with demand. Many tiny businesses with no money for
advertising rely upon Twitter as their only marketing tool [34].
Text messaging played an important role in the ouster of Philippine president Joseph
Estrada in 2001. During his impeachment trial, his political allies in the Philippine
Congress voted to keep some evidence against him from being revealed. Filipinos who
hoped to see President Estrada convicted used text messaging to organize a demonstra-
tion on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue in Manila. Over the next couple of days, mil-
lions more text messages were sent and forwarded—many reading “Go 2 EDSA. Wear
blk."—and the crowd rose to more than one million people. Intimidated by the size of
