OpenMethods Blog http://www.openmethods.com/wordpress Adventures in Voice Application Tools and Development Thu, 22 Jul 2010 01:05:06 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.1.3-RC1 en The wisdom behind SMS’ 160-character limit http://www.openmethods.com/wordpress/the-wisdom-behind-sms-160-character-limit/ http://www.openmethods.com/wordpress/the-wisdom-behind-sms-160-character-limit/#comments Tue, 05 May 2009 14:13:55 +0000 Eugene http://www.openmethods.com/wordpress/2009/05/05/the-wisdom-behind-sms-160-character-limit/ More mobile text messages go through the networks than cellular voice calls. Carriers make loads of money charging for text messages. Social network Twitter is so popular because it’s SMS-friendly.

But why only 160 characters? Which wise man devised such a limit on undoubtedly one of the ubiquitous means of communication in modern history?

It turns out there is absolutely no wisdom in this restriction. It simply originated from Friedhelm Hillebrand, working from his typewriter in Germany. He noticed that most sentences require no more than 160 letters. So he just decided 160 was the magic number.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Eugene

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