Today I read the following (Strand Consults):

“Facebook is killing the mobile operators’ SMS traffic and revenue… The golden days where SMS traffic and revenue simply continued to grow are almost over, as customers are now moving part of their mobile communication traffic over to Facebook.”

But I would say it differently:

“Facebook *Data* is killing the mobile operators’ SMS traffic and revenue”.

Yes, Facebook is definitely helping kill SMS revenue, but *data* is what is really killing SMS usage and revenue — data is what enables Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the many other content and messaging apps and tools.

Network Operators have known that this day would come, and, operators are making tons of money with data today.

I’ve been seeing something interesting among the Net-generation (teenagers, young adults) — they are preferring Twitter over Facebook when it comes to messaging. Let’s not under estimate the power of “short and straight to the point” messaging. What this tells me is that Facebook will peak, and others will take its place w.r.t. messaging.

Data taking over SMS was a matter of time. The “death” of SMS, time-wise, is actually happening as expected:

ceo