In September this year, the BBC reports that text messages were being sent in the UK at the rate of a bit over a billion a week.   That means that as many text messages are now being sent every week as in the whole of 1999.

Text messaging remains an interesting example of discontinuous change.  Even over a much shorter period, one of the top texting days of 2005, A-level results day with 99.5 million sent, is way below the current daily average of 173 million.

Perhaps we will all look back in another year or two or five and find that slightly odd – in the same way that the rise and fall of the fax machine is beginning to feel like ancient history – because twitter, or pownce or jaiku will have taken that market over.  Or perhaps the direction will have changed again.