As part of the global omnichannel company’s celebration of the milestone for text messaging, Guillermo Rodriguez takes a comic tour through the decades from 1992 to today

Last night, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! included an on-air segment based on global omnichannel company Infobip’s creative campaign to highlight the 30th anniversary of short message service (SMS). Featuring Kimmel’s popular sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez, the “Great Moments in Texting History” segment comically traces the timeline of texting from its origins to present day. The skit starts off with a reenactment of the visionary engineer Neil Papworth sending the world’s first SMS message. In keeping with the theme of the holiday season, he sent a simple yet festive “Merry Christmas” to his colleague Richard Jarvis on December 3rd, 1992. Guillermo introduced a series of scenes that show how technology has evolved over the past three decades since that trailblazing text — from basic phrases and abbreviations, to emojis and other smartphone enabled media. Viewers can watch the clip.

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“We are excited to partner with Jimmy Kimmel Live! To bring our 30th Anniversary of SMS campaign to life! With Infobip reaching more than 70% of the mobile phones across the globe, and empowering businesses and consumers to communicate via SMS, WhatsApp and a host of other messaging services, we are thrilled to find a fun and entertaining way to reach new audiences,” said Ivan Ostojić, Chief Business Officer, Infobip. “Infobip seamlessly connects businesses with customers around the world. In fact, we had more than 1.5 million B2C messages go out over our networks on Black Friday alone!”

• SMS is still surging in B2C, seeing 75% year-on-year growth in customer communications. With its global reach and no reliance on internet connectivity, SMS is still the go-to channel for time-sensitive alerts and notifications.
• As the next generation of SMS, RCS is on the rise, with a 62% increase in RCS interactions from 2021 to 2022.
• Email usage continues to be a huge factor in connecting businesses to customers – with 93% higher traffic on Infobip’s platform in 2022 compared to 2021.

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