Chinese mobile phone users' text-message sending spree during Spring Festival made message writer a
lucrative profession in the country.
It was estimated by China's top two telecommunications
operators, China Mobile and China Unicom, that Chinese people would
send more than 14 billion greeting text messages during the
week-long Spring Festival holiday.
The figure meant excellent income for professional message
writers who wrote for websites that provided downloading services
to cute message seekers.
The writer could reap one cent for each sending after his or her
message was downloaded. A mobile phone user was charged 10 cents
for sending a text message.
In the past week, some productive text message writers earned
more than 10,000 yuan (US$1,280), equivalent to their average
monthly income, according to an employee of China Mobile.
Subscribers want cute, ingenious messages to extend greetings
and bring joy and fun to their friends, so message writers must
have a good command of the language, said a text message writer
surnamed Chen.
The development of the telecommunication industry also requires
that message writers have basic training in art and music to
produce multi-media messages, said Chen, who started to write for
message providing websites three years ago.
China Mobile and China Unicom's officials said they had
optimized their networks to avoid possible message jams during the
holiday season.
Statistics from the Ministry of Information showed that in 2006,
Chinese people sent 429.6 billion short messages through mobile
phones, a daily average of up to 1.2 billion.
(Xinhua News Agency February 24, 2007)
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