What’s up with Comparing Mobile Instant Messaging Behaviors with Traditional SMS

Karen Church Yahoo! Labs

Rodrigo de Oliveira Telefonica Research

Presented at Mobile HCI 2013 - 30th August 2013, Munich, Germany

SMS or Short Message Service

8 trillion SMS Messages sent globally in 2011

- Mobile Messaging Futures 2012-2016

Mobile Instant Messaging Apps

How and why people (teenagers) have adopted SMS in their daily lives, e.g Grinter & Eldridge 2001 & 2003, Taylor & Harper 2002

Different countries and demographics, e.g. Ito 2005, Kasesniemi & Rautiainen 2002, Kim et al 2007, Battestini et al. 2010

Past research on SMS behaviors

27 billion messages per day handled by WhatsApp

- The Next Web, June 2013

Differences in the perceptions and motives of use between WhatsApp and SMS….

WhatsApp

•  MIM application for smartphones

•  Runs on many mobile platforms (Android, iOS, Blackberry, etc)

•  No cost •  Requires data plan/

internet connection

Groups

•  Beyond 1:1 communication

•  Supports group based chats.

Beyond text

•  Sharing of images, videos, sounds, locations, etc.

Social Cues

Social Cues

Status

Social Cues

2 ticks!

message

delivery

VSs

1! 2!

Procedure

interviews survey

8 themes

Phase 1: Interview

John (P1) 36

Phd Student 2 years

Mike (P2) 29

Mobile dev 2 years

Oliver (P3) 35

HR Developer 2 years

Dean (P7) 31

Researcher 1 year

Eric (P8) 40

Project Mgr 3 years

Cathy (P4) 24

HR Intern 2 years

Laura (P5) 45

Teacher 3 months

Beth (P3) 36

Business owner 2.5 years

Ann (P9) 30 PA

2 years

Phase 1: 9 participants

Icon source: http://www.thenounproject.com

1.  Review of daily communication needs

2.  Perceived value of WhatsApp, reason for adoption and history of use

3.  Motives and intent of SMS and WhatsApp focusing on factors like cost, trust, privacy

Phase 1: Interview

Phase 2: Survey

Image source: http://lighthouse8.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/people.jpg

131 subjects

70 61

20 – 60 age range

33.7 average age

Spain living in / from

54.4% Pay for SMS

Phase 2: Survey

1.  Expected behavior

2.  Actual usage behavior (reported)

3.  Two groups:

•  SMS payers (N=71)

•  SMS nonpayers (N=60)

Image source: http://lighthouse8.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/people.jpg

1. cost

“ “

Using WhatsApp is a guarantee the other party won’t pay. I might not care. And now I don’t care because sending SMS for me is unlimited but maybe other people care.

57 % SMS Payers believe they would not change their frequency of SMS usage even if SMS was free (χ2 = 19, 803, p < .001)

Negative Correlations

•  between paying for SMS and frequency of SMS usage with clients (ρ = −.35, p < .01) and for business purposes (ρ = −.22, p = .03).

Positive Correlations

•  Paying for SMS and frequency of WhatsApp usage with family members (ρ = .20, p = .03) and for planning/coordinating social activities (ρ = .18, p < .05).

41 % SMS Payers reported not seeing any value in SMS compared to WhatsApp

41 % SMS Payers reported not seeing any value in SMS compared to WhatsApp

22 % SMS Non-Payers reported not seeing any value in SMS compared to WhatsApp

2. social influence

Recommended by friends

“ “

I was using SMS and everyone had WhatsApp and everyone was saying, you are the last one and it costs money to talk with you so get WhatsApp

3. nature/ intent

“ “

With WhatsApp maybe you type more, but the conversation is more fluid. You type a sentence and someone sends a sentence and then you type another one. I have the feeling that if it’s WhatsApp, it’s an open conversation. It is similar to if you were talking in person

“ “ I can say much more things than 120 characters and I don’t have to think about the whole message. I can be more natural

On-the-fly social planning

6 different intents

1.  Chatting, 2.  Planning/coordination of social activities, 3.  Sharing personal news, 4.  Interacting with groups of people, 5.  Business/work related communications, 6.  Receiving ads

Less than once per month

About once per month

About once per week

Several times per week

About once per day

Several times per day

4. community, sense of

connection

“ “ WhatsApp for me is very informal so it’s friends and family. SMS is formal, with clients and then my friends and family who don’t have WhatsApp

WhatsApp

•  Used significantly more often than SMS across all communities (p < .01)

•  Used most often with partners than any other community (p < .01)

•  Higher frequency of usage with family, close friends and friends than with work colleagues or clients (p < .001)

8 of 9 participants used groups

5. immediacy, privacy & expectation

“ “ I tend to think that SMS is not as fast as WhatsApp. I don’t know why but I think maybe people are more aware of WhatsApp and not so aware of SMS

Status

“ “ people read too much into when you’re online and when you replied to messages or why you didn’t reply and they try to guess why and sometimes this is annoying

42 % Considered SMS to have fewer privacy issues than WhatsApp

34 % Considered privacy as the most valuable aspect of SMS

2 ticks!

7 of 9 Participants thought that 2 ticks = message read

“ “ I don’t like it very much because if I don’t want to answer straight away, I don’t want them to know that I’ve seen the message

“ “

If I send a message and you are busy at least answer and say that you’re busy...... if you’re online, it sort of means that it’s in front of you and you are doing other stuff and you are ignoring me...

47 % Revealing last access time is a privacy concern

6. reliability & guarantee

6 of 9 Participants though that SMS is more reliable for message delivery

Reasons included

•  SMS is a paid service and money increases reliability of a service

•  SMS is an older, more established service

•  For others it depended on their past experience with one service or another – Bad past experience = bad perception

 

“ “ It’s happened to me that I’ve sent messages and they arrived very late, like 1 day or 2 days late

30 % WhatsApp messages have a better chance of being delivered that SMS.

7. choice of technology

Choice of SMS or WhatsApp?

•  Does the recipient have WhatsApp?

•  Is it formal? Or informal communication?

•  Do I want or need the message to be delivered immediately?

8. coping mechanisms

5 of the participants always switch phone to silent mode

Negative Correlations

•  between how often participants use WhatsApp with clients and how often they turn on the phone’s silent mode (ρ = −.41, p = .001)

Business communications

•  Frequency of using WhatsApp for business is reversely related to the frequency of muting phone notifications (ρ = −.23, p = .02).

•  Same for using SMS for business (ρ = −.29, p = .006)

Image source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/01/mobile-messaging-apps_n_2991747.html

WhatsApp use in general….

1.  Used more often, closer-knit groups

2.  More conversational

3.  Perceived as more immediate

4.  More chatting and on-the-fly planning

Image source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/01/mobile-messaging-apps_n_2991747.html

1.  Privacy concerns and last access

2.  Delivery notifications, i.e. 2 ticks

3.  Increased expectations of fast response

Problems with WhatsApp

Future work

1.  Explore behavior by combining logging of real-life usage with reported usage

2.  Different demographics and cultures

3.  How to handle abundance of mobile notifications?

thank you! Qs? Karen Church

www.karenchurch.com kchurch@yahoo-inc.com

@karenchurch

Full Paper available here - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2493225 Images from - http://www.sxc.hu or where acknowledged