I read this article by Michelle Meyers.

The article reviews one of the coolest apps on texting using an iPod Touch called Textfree, this also works with an iPad.  Textfree assigns a real phone number, and lets one send and receive texts for free.

In other words, “No one knows you don’t have a phone.”

Michelle goes on to add the following:

In the roughly two months since users of Pinger’s Textfree app started getting assigned actual phone numbers, Pinger has handed out 1.6 million. That’s as many wireless numbers as AT&T gave out to net new subscribers in April, May, and June, according to the company’s second-quarter filing. Pinger is now sending out about 630 million text messages per month; 70 percent of those are sent from iPod Touches, and 30 percent are sent from iPhones. The median age of the app’s users is 18.

Textfree is one of a handful of mobile-texting apps that you can find in Apple’s App Store, Gogii’s TextPlus among the higher-ranked ones. But only Textfree (for now, anyway) hands out an actual phone number, which can later be ported, as required by law. Other apps send texts from an e-mail or short code.

The handing out of phone numbers was part of Pinger’s preannounced plan to start offering voice-calling options–”Textfree with Voice”–slated for a beta launch at the end of September. Users will have the option to pay for voice minutes, or they can earn minutes by doing things like downloading free apps, filling out surveys, or performing other tasks that don’t seem to bother youth already accustomed to having their consumer habits tracked.

In other words, using Wi-Fi on her iPod Touch (along with microphone-equipped earbuds), my daughter will be able to actually call and talk to me. And an iPhone customer–say, a college student like Woock’s son, who’s grown accustomed to getting everything for free–could use his Textfree phone number as an extra one that doesn’t cost anything to use.

Textfree’s model is not earthshaking, in that similar services are also offered through the likes of Skype mobile or Google Voice. But will it disrupt wireless carriers accustomed to their profitable texting fees? The verdict is still out.

Carrier consequences
AT&T declined to comment for this story. And a Verizon Wireless representative said the company is aware of Textfree but that it’s too early in the game to draw any conclusions about the impacts of it and other such free texting apps. She did, however, offer figures to illustrate the growth in texting. Verizon customers sent 180 billion text messages in the second quarter of 2010, versus 148 billion in the same quarter in 2009.

In Pinger’s own surveying, it has found that about half of those using Textfree on an iPhone have reduced or turned off their texting plan. But the company maintains that its business is still a net win for the carriers, who haven’t yet called to complain.

Textfree in conversation mode. You can assign different wallpaper to different contacts.

“If they actually look at the math, we are very net-positive for them,” Woock said. Of the roughly 22 million messages Textfree sends out each day, about 14 million today are sent to paying phone customers. And then those customers reply, he said. Same goes for Textfree with Voice.

“When your daughter makes a phone call to another person who has a cell phone, that person is going to pay for the minutes. Now the carrier wins not just on texting, but on voice minutes too,” he said.

Forrester Research Principal Analyst Charles Golvin says the tween market for apps like Textfree used on an iPod Touch is worth watching, particularly if the ads served are meaningful and relevant. But he doesn’t see consumers who can afford an iPhone and its required data package “pinching pennies” to use free texting apps to save mere dollars on their monthly bills. (AT&T charges iPhone users $20 for unlimited texts and $5 for 200.)

The overall trend, however, shows how we’re moving toward a future in which the type of communication–be it text, voice mail, phone calls, e-mail–won’t matter. “It will all be just a bunch of bits flowing,” Golvin said.

Nielsen senior researcher Roger Entner said any impact free texting apps are having on carriers isn’t showing up in the numbers. But he also recognizes the power of something like Textfree for teens, for whom the texting numbers “are staggering.”

Entner pointed to recent Nielsen research showing that U.S. teenagers are using 3,146 messages a month, which translates to more than 10 messages every hour of the month that they are not sleeping or in school. Even tweens under 12, he added, are sending 1,146 messages per month, which is almost four text messages per waking hour that they are not at school.

Getting data from the under-12 set is difficult for researchers and carriers because they aren’t allowed to be surveyed without parental permission, and they don’t show up in the phone bill data.

However, Pinger’s own user registration data offers a pretty specific illustration. The majority of its users, 28 percent, fall in the 18-to-22 age range; 18 percent are 15 to 17 years old; 18 percent are 12 to 14 years old; 10 percent are 11 or under; 10 percent are 23 to 28 years old; 6 percent are 29 to 34; 7 percent are 35 to 49; and 3 percent are 50 and over.

Answering the call
San Jose, Calif.-based Pinger was founded by Woock and Joe Sipher, both veterans of Handspring (which was eventually sold to Palm) and then Virgin Electronics. They incubated in 2005 with venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and got funding initially for a service that treated a voice message like a text message–letting you send voice messages across any network. People liked the service, but there was never a good revenue path, they said.

With the advent of the iPhone and its App Store, the duo changed their direction. In 2008, they launched an app called Pinger Phone that helped integrate different types of communications methodologies for contacts (social-network usernames, IM handles, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, etc.) But it also let you text for free, which is really why people were downloading it in big numbers, Woock and Sipher said.

That led Pinger to develop a dedicated ad-supported texting app, and the result was Textfree, which hit the App Store in February 2009. “It went crazy and continued to go crazy,” Sipher said.

Initially, users could text up to 15 messages a day for free, or pay $6 a year for unlimited texting. In May 2010, however, Pinger made the app free for an unlimited amount of texting. That’s also when it started handing out phone numbers.

“What that phone number does is, it creates a proxy social network. It’s your ID to all your friends,” Woock said. “Once you give people that number, they’re texting you…our retention is off the hook.”

And while Pinger gets its phone numbers just like the carriers do, by buying them from a local exchange carrier, they’ve been able to get good pricing because of their already established text volume. “We have carrier-like volume so we can get carrier-like pricing,” Sipher said.

Pinger, which offers other apps, such as i2i and Doodle Buddy, has been profitable since September 2009 and employs more than 20 people full-time. It generates about 1.2 billion ad impressions a month through a range of mobile-ad networks, though most are driven by Google’s. Textfree, itself, counting all its iterations, has been downloaded more than 7 million times.

Although founded on the idea of carrier independence, Woock and Sipher admit that Pinger is very reliant on Apple right now. Still, all it needs is an open operating system (they plan to launch Textfree for Android by the end of the year) and a mobile device that can connect over data. “We are platform-agnostic,” Woock said.

WHEN she founded the digital ad agency Exopolis nine years ago, Kat Egan wasn’t worried about finding good talent. Although the Internet was young, she figured trained technologists would soon be pelting her with résumés.

Nearly a decade later, she’s still waiting.

“It’s shocking: even now, in 2010, it’s very challenging to find great talent,” Ms. Egan said. You can find people, she said, but “you know that they’re going to need a lot of mentoring and a lot of hand-holding, and it’s an enormous investment.”

“Digital has been growing exponentially for 15 years now,” Ms. Egan said. “Where’s the education that supports that?”

One answer is in a new program at the University of Colorado, Boulder, called Boulder Digital Works, where Ms. Egan is a board member.

The university had had a strong undergraduate program in advertising, and it is one of the top majors, said David Slayden, executive director of Boulder Digital Works. When he thought about creating a graduate program, though, he wanted to take a technology-focused approach.

Many other graduate programs “were built on a platform of creative based on Bill Bernbach,” he said, referring to the founder of the agency DDB who paired copywriters with art directors and had the teams churn out portfolios of creative concepts. “It was very analog,” Mr. Slayden said.

He began asking ad agencies what they needed in new hires, and agencies like Exopolis, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners had a near-unanimous response. “They weren’t getting what they needed to grow and develop,” Mr. Slayden said, especially in areas that combined creative approaches and technology.

Though new entrants to the work force had grown up with computers, “the big illusion is just because they know how to play on the audience side, they know how to play on the stage,” Mr. Slayden said. Still, when students enter the program, they are expected to be able to use Adobe software and build a basic Web site using tools like HTML, PHP and MySQL. Along with technology and creative skills, the program also emphasizes entrepreneurship.

The first class of Boulder Digital Works students began in October 2009. Mr. Slayden said that initially, he decided to make it a certificate program, which let him avoid many of the bureaucratic details of creating a degree program; in the future, though, he said it may grant a master’s degree.

Structurally, the curriculum is more flexible than in traditional schools. A few courses last a full semester, like motion design and interactive environments (which includes designing for the iPad or Android), but others are shorter — one on leading for the future lasts only a week.

“The problem with traditional educational programs trying to teach digital is they’re kind of strapped down to that old model,” said Chris Znerold, a 24-year-old student who had been an interactive designer at IAC before enrolling. “One of the things David’s done a great job of is untethering the curriculum. The classes change with the industry and with our particular interests.”

Mr. Slayden said that Boulder Digital Works had already revised the curriculum four times since October.

A “lead teacher” is in charge of each course. That is sometimes a professor, but may be someone from the ad industry like Kip Voytek, senior vice president for communications and experience planning at the agency Rapp Collins Worldwide, or Jon Kolko, an associate creative director at Frog Design.

Visiting lecturers from agencies and technology firms drop in. Industry people who don’t want to lecture can advise on technical projects or mentor the students.

The curriculum is heavy on projects, Mr. Slayden said: “You don’t get into shape by reading about exercise.”

In one project, Mr. Slayden asked students to design an interactive exhibit that would be installed in a series of arches in a popular Boulder walkway.

The students presented their ideas to a group of architects and city officials, and the feedback was tough. Although the students talked to pedestrians, Mr. Slayden said, they did not talk to the architect; the ideas weren’t tailored adequately for the space; and “they thought that it could run all the time, and it would get very boring.”

The students will soon revise their initial ideas.

One favorite project, said Denise Horton, a student, was for a class called Startup. In six weeks, she and her team were to come up with an idea for a Web-based company, pitch it to a venture capitalist and design a site. Her idea, an eco-friendly retailing site calledOneSeam, is currently up in basic form, and she hopes to turn it into an e-commerce site soon.

Ms. Horton, 49, had been advising cable companies on digital marketing strategies before enrolling at Boulder Digital Works, but, she said, learning the newest technologies on the job was difficult.

“This is practical, get-your-hands-dirty, roll-up-your-sleeves, and learn about how to code a Web site, about technology platforms, about the Android OS operating system, the impact of the iPad,” she said of the Boulder curriculum.

“The digital platform is ubiquitous,” she said. “It’s just a part of everyone’s way of thinking and communicating and sharing, connecting, buying, doing business. It’s probably the fastest-paced industry almost anybody could be in right now.”