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Texting adds a host of characters

A Chinese woman uses her mobile phone near a balloon shaped like a mobile phone on the streets of Beijing, China. Associated Press (FILE Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
From Staff and Wire Reports The Spokesman-Review
A Chinese woman uses her mobile phone near a balloon shaped like a mobile phone on the streets of Beijing, China. Associated Press (FILE Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

Cell phone users in China sent 429 billion text messages this past year, while India added more mobile subscribers in that year than Britain had in total, according to a new report.

The report by Ofcom, the British government’s media and telecommunications watchdog, said mobile phones are driving most of the communications sector’s growth and account for 53 percent of total telecom revenue.

In India, the number of new mobile subscriptions doubled to 150 million in 2006 — an increase that exceeds Britain’s total of 70 million mobile connections.

Still, only 14 percent of the Indian population had a mobile connection, showing its remaining growth potential.

In China, mobile users sent an equivalent of 967 text messages per user, more than any other country. The country estimates it now has roughly 520 million cell phone users, in a country with a population of 1.3 billion.

The findings were part of the research included in the Ofcom International Communications Report, which looked at the $1.78 trillion global television, radio, and telecommunications sector in 2006 to analyze growing trends.

Scrapbook help

Building scrapbooks online and sharing them has become a major Web activity. Seattle-based Smilebox, a maker of multimedia scrapbooks and slideshows, has landed a $7 million investment from Bessemer Ventures along with previous backer Frazier Technology Ventures, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The news comes just as competitor Scrapblog announced funding from Disney’s Steamboat Ventures. Both companies are in the business of developing user-created multimedia slideshows that can be embedded on any number of other Web sites.

Officials at Smilebox say they plan to expand its presence on social networks with the funding.

Online rankings

The Nielsen ratings service reports the New York Times leads all U.S. papers in total time readers consumed information online during November 2007. These are estimated totals of time spent during the month, according to Nielsen.

The top five: NYTimes.com (550,035 minutes); USAToday.com (136,603); WashingtonPost.com (145,083); Boston.com (79,712) and WSJ.com (72,110).