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July 31, 2010

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Clive Thompson on the Death of the Phone Call

My phone bills are shrinking. Not, unfortunately, in cost. I mean they’re getting shorter. I recently found an old bill from a decade ago; it was fully 15 pages long, because back then I was making a ton of calls—about 20 long-distance ones a day. Today my bills are a meager two or three pages, at most.

Odds are this has happened to you, too. According to Nielsen, the average number of mobile phone calls we make is dropping every year, after hitting a peak in 2007. And our calls are getting shorter: In 2005 they averaged three minutes in length; now they’re almost half that.

We’re moving, in other words, toward a fascinating cultural transition: the death of the telephone call. This shift is particularly stark among the young. Some college students I know go days without talking into their smartphones at all. I was recently hanging out with a twentysomething entrepreneur who fumbled around for 30 seconds trying to find the option that actually let him dial someone.

» via Wired

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viciousneutral said: I can see this for personal use, but real business happens on the phone. Sure we send tons of emails everyday, but whenever I want to make something happen I “get on the horn” as they say. It’s still the best way to immediately push the agenda.
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Expanding on the topic, I wonder how phone use has changed for businesses. Thompson gets at it, I think, when he closes...
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My phone bills are shrinking. Not, unfortunately, in cost. I mean they’re getting shorter. I recently found an old bill...
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Reblogged via infoneer-pulse: infoneer pulse