The iPhone, along with almost every other phone coming out these days, has the option to install so many communication apps that text messages are becoming redundant. The funny thing is that it seems like AT&T doesn’t understand this idea. Remember the original iPhone, and how 1500 SMS would only cost $10 and 200 would be free? Yeah, I do too. Now you get NO SMS off the bat, and you have to shell out at least $5 for any sort of SMS plan.

The experiment I’m running has several sides to it. For one, you have to be on all the major social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter primarily). But secondly, and this is the hardest part, you have to make people get used to contacting you through these mediums.

The Tools You’ll Need
AIM: This is the most efficient app I’ve found to be able to communicate with friends without using SMS thanks to AIM’s push notifications. The app keeps me logged in for 24hrs which is great for friends who work in offices and have AIM on their computers. They’re able to get an immediate answer from me since the push notifications make new IMs act like SMSs.

Twitter: There are countless twitter clients for the iPhone (and others) out there that will do the job. The only problem is that there aren’t any clients that I know of that use the push notifications. This does create a problem for being able to respond immediately. This problem will for sure be solved soon enough. I definitely have my favorites in this category, but I would suggest using a light app for quick load times like TwitterFon. TweetDeck takes a little longer to load, but has way more functionality.

Facebook: This is a no-brainer considering everyone and their mom is on it (literally). On my previous post I detailed Facebook for iPhone’s upcoming update and its impending addition of push notifications. Once that goes through SMS will effectively seize to matter.

It really amazes me at how ridiculous and late to the game big corporations can be. They should be begging us to buy SMS plans. Join me in this experiment and free yourself of redundant plans. You’ll save at least $10 a month.

Related Posts
1. Using Social Networking To Cut Down On Phone Usage
2. Facebook For iPhone Getting Major Update (Updated)
3. Facebook For iPhone Finally At 3.0
4. Gowalla For iPhone: The Birth Of Social Gameworking?
5. Prowl: Push Notifications From Your Mac To Your iPhone

Tags: Facebook, iPhone, Social Networks, Twitter