SMS Text Blog

PRS Connectivity and support key to developing the telemedia business, says txtNation

2008-09-08T14:32:28+01:00

Connectivity and service are the two key business drivers in the expanding premium rate telemedia market, according to content, messaging and billing from txtNation, which has recently expanded its connections in to India and China and has upped its already high level commitment to support with the launch of txtNation SD, a dedicated, centralised support service.

The company – which will be appearing at CTIA in San Francisco next week and at Ad:tech in London later this month – has already gone live in China and India and has two clients using its connectivity in these regions. One, a large consumer electronics brand, is using it to offer add ons to pre-loaded memory cards in phones in the UK and China.

Alongside connectivity, txtNation – which has connections in 45 countries globally – sees the key to success in the premium messaging, billing and content market as being support services. Michael Whelan, director of txtNation says: “Retention is starting to improve in the industry, as are pay outs and connectivity, so now support to clients is the key to staying ahead”.

For this reason, txtNation has rolled out txtNation SD, its support and distribution arm, which will give a total range of support options using a centralised support system. Whelan admits that his company puts a lot of resources in to support – offering, in his words, “true 24x7 support globally, on a solid platform and two account managers – in fact we spend more now on support than sales as its so key to getting and keeping clients”.

In Whelan’s view “one in five” prospective clients come to us complaining about lack of support [from other companies]. We don’t want to be one of those companies so we have support all over the world to follow the sun.”

As well as offering unprecedented levels of support, txtNation has also rolled out version 5 of its Control Panel web interface, which allows clients to set up and run any of the mobile services that txtNation has on offer. “It’s a one-stop-shop of everything we do,” says Whelan.

According to Whelan, Control Panel 5.1 (CP5) is an exceptionally powerful tool for the billing and delivery of rich content and services. Via a streamlined, accessible Web-based interface, CP5 serves the enterprise in powering a range of award-winning content, messaging and billing solutions. CP5 also provides a plethora of options that allow clients to customise every aspect of how they use the services provided by txtNation, he says.

“Whatever services you use, you get 24x7 access to a control panel that enables you to fine tune those services, request an upgrade, buy new services and to keep a close eye on data related to your account,” adds Whelan.

CP5 is the next step in the evolution of txtNation’s successful content management and applications platform, built on years of experience, and industry expertise in delivering both common and bespoke mobile services. Among other things, CP5 provides centralised and intelligent content store, intuitive access to SMS, MMS, WAP and email solutions, as well as wizard-driven templates for common services. It also brings easier integration with industry gateways, premium billing and alternative billing, and lets clients create content portals easily, as well as administer subs and one-off purchases.

It also offers full real-time statistics, campaign management and flexible support for white label and resold services and DRM.

The service has already been put to use by wine seller Blossom Hill, which is using CP5 to manage an SMS and MMS competition on its wine labels, where consumers could enter by text or by sending a picture to shortcodes on the bottle label.

For more information, please visit: http://txtnation.com/contact_call.php

txtNation Launches New Affiliate Scheme

2008-08-26T14:36:00+01:00

The market's leading mobile solutions provider txtNation are extremely proud to announce that their new affiliate program is now up and running.

txtNation openly invites their clients to encourage not only friends but business colleagues or acquaintances to join txtNation’s ever expanding mobile solutions enabling the client to further increase their profits. One of the best things about this new scheme is that anyone needing a mobile billing solution, amongst many other unique solutions, can become a client of txtNation who then in turn can refer others and make the most of this exciting new scheme themselves, making this above all a win-win situation for everyone.

This new affiliate scheme has been provided to give existing clients an amazing incentive to persuade people they know who could also benefit from txtNation’s solutions which could drastically increase revenue, to engage txtNation's unique services and as a reward for their referral and loyalty and belief in txtNation’s services they will receive a bonus of 5% of whatever revenue their referred accounts generate. To show their commitment to their client's this 5% comes from txtNation themselves not from the newly referred clients. The new clients will keep 100% of their usual revenue in addition to their own revenue generated through the use of txtNation’s services.

txtNation have provided many ways for their existing client's to invite friends, business colleagues or acquaintances to join and begin reaping the extensive benefits that txtNation has to offer and to do this existing client's will need to be logged into the control panel. Once logged in, the affiliate menu with a list of ways to invite people will be clearly marked, making this an easy painless way of potentially generating extra revenue, for example; simply enter the e-mail addresses of those who are being referred and txtNation will generate an email that will then be sent out to their referral providing them with instructions on how easy it is to sign-up with txtNation and how txtNation can launch their business awareness tenfold and how they can soon also be enjoying the benefits of this scheme also. Banners can be placed on web pages with links back to the affiliate sign-up form, text based links and non-electronic means, such as sending out letters and business cards along with the clients’ unique referral code are all examples of available methods of referral, so the only question left to ask is 'what are you waiting for?'

For example txtNation’s mPUSH brand delivers content straight to the paying customers mobiles, whereas the mFUSION brand runs mobile campaigns such as competitions, voting, alerts, reverse auctions, bulk messaging, VCards to name but a few, the mBILL platform aggregates connections through one API to allow clients to build their own mobile services and then there is the mENABLE platform providing a very powerful billing solution for online websites. All of these solutions run on premium short codes which available in over 45 countries worldwide, the latest of which to go live was China which has produced astronomical results.

Contact TxtNation

Twitter Announce Removal Of Outbound SMS Text Alerts

2008-08-14T03:47:54+01:00

twitter have just announced that they'll no longer being sending outbound SMS text alerts to users of their service. Here's the email I received...

Hi,

I'm sending you this note because you registered a mobile device to work with Twitter over our UK number. I wanted to let you know that we are making some changes to the way SMS works on Twitter. There is some good news and some bad news.

I'll start with the bad news. Beginning today, Twitter is no longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number. If you enjoy receiving updates from Twitter via +44 762 480 1423, we are recommending that you explore some suggested alternatives.

Note: You will still be able to UPDATE over our UK number.

Before I go into more detail, here's a bit of good news: Twitter will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months. These new numbers will make Twittering more accessible for you if you've been using SMS to send long-distance updates from outside the UK.

Why are we making these changes?

Mobile operators in most of the world charge users to send updates. When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to ten followers, you aren't charged ten times--that's because we've been footing the bill. When we launched our free SMS service to the world, we set the clock ticking. As the service grew in popularity, so too would the price.

Our challenge during this window of time was to establish relationships with mobile operators around the world such that our SMS services could become sustainable from a cost perspective.
We achieved this goal in Canada, India, and the United States.
We can provide full incoming and outgoing SMS service without passing along operator fees in these countries.

We took a risk hoping to bring more nations onboard and more mobile operators around to our way of thinking but we've arrived at a point where the responsible thing to do is slow our costs and take a different approach. Since you probably don't live in Canada, India, or the US, we recommend receiving your Twitter updates via one of the following methods.

m.twitter.com works on browser-enabled phones m.slandr.net works on browser-enabled phones TwitterMail.com works on email-enabled phones Cellity http://bit.ly/12bw4R works on java-enabled phones TwitterBerry http://bit.ly/MFAfJ works on BlackBerry phones Twitterific http://bit.ly/1WxjwQ works on iPhones

Twitter SMS by The Numbers

It pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid placing undue burden on our company and our service. Even with a limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass these high fees on to our users.

Twitter will continue to negotiate with mobile operators in Europe, Asia, China, and The Americas to forge relationships that benefit all our users. Our goal is to provide full, two-way service with Twitter via SMS to every nation in a way that is sustainable from a cost perspective. Talks with mobile companies around the world continue. In the meantime, more local numbers for updating via SMS are on the way. We'll keep you posted.

Thank you for your attention,
Biz Stone, Co-founder
Twitter, Inc.
http://twitter.com/biz

AdMob Announce New iPhone Advertising Tools for iPhone Developers and Advertisers

2008-07-25T00:19:57+01:00

AdMob, the mobile advertising network, have launch some incredible looking tools for iPhone developers and advertisers looking to target iPhone users.

Advertisers can place optimized image ads and text ads with 'click to call', 'click to text' and 'click to watch' functionality.

Advertisers can also target iPhone users by location and the type of connection being used (wi-fi, 3G and Edge).

AdMob have had iPhone ad code for sometime, but it's results were questionable. The new code addresses the issues faced by advertisers and iPhone developers.

Take a look for yourself: http://www.admob.com/s/solutions/iphone_dev

MobileVerbs to Enable Premium SMS Voting for Zee TV USA

2008-07-22T13:05:50+01:00

MobileVerbs Inc. (www.mobileverbs.com), a provider of on-demand Mobile Marketing Platform, has reached an agreement with Zee TV USA Inc. (www.zeetvusa.com), a "flagship" ethnic entertainment channel, to enable premium SMS voting for upcoming programs.

The MobileVerbs service will allow the audience to cast their vote for their favorite artist by simply sending in a SMS message.

"We are excited about the opportunity to leverage the most innovative mobile marketing solution from MobileVerbs," says Jaideep Balial, Vice President and Head of Programming at Zee TV USA.

FishText: Possibly the cheapest ad-free SMS text service around

2008-07-22T12:50:10+01:00

CardBoardFish (www.cardboardfish.com), the low-cost SMS specialist, today launched FishText, a mobile application that substantially reduces the cost of national and international ad-free texts from a mobile phone.

FishText is Java-based and runs on most handsets. There is also a web-based version at www.FishText.com. Both bypass a mobile operator’s network and thus enable users to save money for every text message they send.

FishText is free when texting other FishText users and costs from just 1p for all other texts to over 200 countries. After registering, every user gets GBP0.20/EUR0.30 worth of free credit, which is up to 20 free text messages. As an introductory offer until 1 August 2008, FishText users topping up with GBP20 or EUR20 will get their credit doubled, with no expiry date. This will effectively halve the price of all messages, so that texts to South Africa or the US for example will cost just 0.7p.

The only other cost for customers using the mobile application are data charges for the small amount of data used by FishText, which are charged by the mobile operator. Credit, which does not expire, can be purchased on a mobile or via the website by using a range of convenient and common payment methods such as credit/debit card, PayPal or Google Checkout. UK users can also top up via a premium message, and this feature will be available in more countries in the near future.

FishText is ad-free and the recipient will see the sender’s normal mobile phone number without any FishText branding. FishText also enables text messages of up to 459 characters and supports the synchronization of the mobile and the web-based application. FishText uses strong encryption to keep customer data safe and secure, both on the mobile application and on the web.

The mobile application can be downloaded at wap.FishText.com and, once installed, can be used for sending and receiving text messages straight away. FishText also provides an optional virtual mobile number for a small fee, allowing users to have a completely separate messaging account and separate mobile phone number without the need for a contract. The virtual number is a UK number, regardless of which country the user is in.

“As SMS specialists we at CardBoardFish have created an SMS solution that bypasses the operator, passing the savings back to the consumer”, says Ben Fitter, Director of New Media at CardBoardFish. “There are many expensive contracts offering various bundles of text messages; FishText removes the need for this and reduces costs.”

txtNation Powers Leading Wine Brands Picture Campaign

2008-07-22T12:42:02+01:00

txtNation have announced that they'll be working with Blossom Hill to help launch their two new and exciting mobile phone competitions.

Pulse Group, who are promoting the Blossom Hill wine promotions are using the mobile solutions provider txtNation and have created a mobile marketing campaign to offer summer wine drinkers the possibility to win their own garden party throughout summer 2008. 2.35 million bottles have been dispatched with the competition promoted on pack to all the leading supermarket chains.

The competition began back in June as part of the build up to the tennis tournament at Wimbledon, where Blossom Hill were the official wine supplier to The Championships.

There will be 10 weekly prize draws where one lucky person will win one of the Garden Party prizes each week. The text to win competition is running until the end of August 2008 allowing 2 months for consumers to enter as does the On trade mobile picture competition.

1,000 pubs in the UK will be running the mms service for this competition and will have posters, coasters, fridge vinyl with entry information along with a supporting point of sale visibility kit for the activity.

Consumers are to take photos of themselves enjoying Blossom Hill wine with friends to be able to enter into the prize draw where people will win one of the 10 Garden party kit prizes within their local pub.

Users simply take a photo of themselves and send it in with the word 'SUMMER' to 60999. For the other competition they simply text in their name, address and D.O.B along with the word Blossom to 60999 for the chance to win fantastic prizes.

Blossom Hill purchased txtNation mFUSION and mBILL solutions, and txtNation has created the website that Blossom Hill is using to host the picture competition.

txtNations Geoff Goodall commented: "Pulse Group have been very professional and knew what they wanted and with all the details and specifics required we were able to provide the solution in plenty of time to go live. The results from the campaigns have been fantastic"

Pulse Group's Jon Harding commented "txtnation have provided a quick and easy solution to our clients varied promotional needs. They have set up a dedicated working area where all entries, both picture and text, can be viewed without any need for extensive IT training. It really has allowed us to run the campaign easily whilst providing our client all the data they need to evaluate post campaign"

EVERYBODY SAY 'CHEESE (AND WINE)'!

Visit: txtNation.com | pulsegroup.com

Clickatell chosen by a number of Mobile Social Networking Communities

2008-07-18T08:23:00+01:00

Bluepulse, mig33, MXit and Rummble Use SMS to Improve Mobile Social Experience.

Clickatell, global mobile messaging leader, today announced that mig33, Bluepulse, MXit and Rummble have selected Clickatell’s award winning SMS gateway to increase customer acquisition, improve the effectiveness of social communities, and increase the overall “stickiness” of mobile communities.

In today’s mobile society, people want to communicate and stay in touch while on the go, and the addition of text messaging to mobile social networks greatly improves the ability to stay connected with friends, family and business associates anywhere, anytime. People of all ages “get” text messaging, and it’s inherent on 99% of the 3 billion mobile phones in existence today.

The global social networking market will grow to a massive $28.9 billion for revenues generated from all business models in this industry by 2012, according to Informa Telecoms. Within that massive market, the mobile social networking market is getting the attention of many people across the globe.

“With industry giants such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook and others now investing millions into mobile messaging strategies,” commented Pieter de Villiers, CEO of Clickatell, “we are seeing an up-surge in customer growth in this sector as social networking companies of all size realize the importance of selecting the right enterprise-class messaging partner. Clickatell provides social networking companies something that they have never had before – proven reliable global text messaging delivery that is rapidly and easily deployable across every type of mobile social messaging situation,” commented Pieter de Villiers, CEO of Clickatell. “Our customers understand that mobile is the place to start when delivering social networking.”

SMS is a game-changing medium and can be used for things such as authentication, message alerts, and text reminders to log in to the active mobile social network. The addition of SMS provides a way for these social communities to receive a “tickle” or an alert to log in when they have been inactive, or when they have messages that haven’t been read.

“PCs and mobile phones are becoming virtually interchangeable and people want the freedom of being connected and active within their social communities anytime, anywhere,” commented Vikrant Gandhi, mobile analyst for leading analyst firm, Frost & Sullivan. “Leading social networking companies must bring a solid mobile strategy to their customers, giving them the liberty of staying linked all the time. SMS provides an excellent addition because people already know how to use SMS. It provides an easy way to expand on core offerings, drive personalization and build loyalty to ultimately access more ‘eyeballs’ which results in higher advertising dollars.”

“SMS is the most logical way to attract new members. Receiving an inviting SMS from a friend, with the mobile site address conveniently available makes it much easier to log on and become part of the community,” de Villiers continued. “SMS is inherent and easy to use and therefore, is naturally attractive to mobile user experience. This text invitation can mean the difference between a potential user downloading or deleting. SMS exceeds the mere enhancement of the current social networking business model; it significantly alters and improves the paradigm.”

Clickatell’s easy-to-use APIs and developer tools provide one central point to quickly integrate new SMS capabilities into existing or new offerings. And, Clickatell has years of experience and deep relationships with mobile carriers and can reach over 700 networks in more than 200 countries around the world.

Social networking providers, powered by Clickatell’s mobile messaging, use SMS to further enhance the mobile social networking experience for their users:

Bluepulse is a mobile messaging platform that allows users to send group and peer-to-peer messages, update their status, capture what they are doing with a picture or video and share it with their network immediately – from any Internet-enabled mobile phone, wherever they are and whenever they want. Bluepulse is one of the fastest growing mobile communities in the world, delivering more than 150 million messages per month to users in more than 190 countries. Bluepulse users can choose to receive SMS messages when they have unread direct messages or want a daily summary of their Bluepulse activity.

"SMS provides us with the ability to send invitations from Bluepulse users to their friends to use Bluepulse and to send alerts to Bluepulse users when they have new messages,” said Ben Keighran, Founder and CEO of Bluepulse. “Clickatell provides us with a proven messaging solution with the widest global reach and quality of service ensuring timely delivery regardless of location or device. We wanted a global messaging provider because our community is worldwide and our users don’t deserve any limitations." For more information please visit www.bluepulse.com

Mig33 is a mobile social networking service launched in late 2005. With more than 13 million users in over 200 countries sending more than 50 million messages a day, mig33 offers mobile phone users the power of the Internet and cost savings on VoIP calls, email, instant messaging, chat rooms, text messaging, profiles and photo sharing.

“Clickatell helps us deliver our SMS traffic to the global market,” says Mei Lin Ng, mig33 co-founder and VP of marketing. “Clickatell is a very valuable and supportive partner to mig33. We found their evolving product and increasing coverage to be a big asset and look forward to a continued relationship with them.” For more information please visit www.mig33.com

MXit, a mobile instant messaging company founded in South Africa in 2005, recorded an amazing 2.5 million downloads within 18 months of its launch date by offering users a text chat application that only costs a few cents per message. It now has over 8 million registered users exchanging more than a hundred million text messages per day. In addition to basic chat services, users can exchange greeting cards, pictures and compressed sound clips. MXit also interacts with other online chat platforms such as GTalk, MSN messenger, and Jabber.

“Our users use premium rated SMSs to get credits into their accounts, which are then used to purchase music, skinz, wallpapers and other services on our platforms. We have been using Clickatell from day one and they are our largest SMS provider”, says Herman Heunis, Founder and CEO of MXit. For more information please visit www.mxit.co.za

Rummble, a location based social search and discovery tool, enables users to find recommended content for a location more easily, without a traditional keyword search. Instead, Rummble’s award winning mobile algorithm provides personalized results based upon a trust profile it builds for the individual user and the content within their social network. Since integrating with Clickatell, Rummble’s service has been able to enjoy increased reach to worldwide market.

“SMS allows users to interact with Rummble on their mobiles, despite not being able to utilize a Java application or access the mobile web.” Says Andrew J Scott, founder and CEO of Rummble. “Clickatell offered Rummble the functionality which has enabled us to launch globally, regardless of our member’s handset capabilities.” For more information please visit www.rummble.com

To download Clickatell’s social networking and SMS case study please go to http://www.clickatell.com/central/campaigns/redir.php?cid=31592

TextMagic Chooses Tyntec For SMS Services

2008-07-16T08:17:00+01:00

Online-to-SMS services provider deploys 2-way SMS from mobile messaging operator.

Mobile messaging operator TynTec (www.tyntec.com) today announces that it has been selected by TextMagic (www.textmagic.com), the online SMS service provider, to power the company's messaging services. Under the deal, TynTec will provide TextMagic with incoming and outgoing SMS messaging to underpin its online SMS communications service.

TextMagic will be using TynTec for the two parts of its services. When users send a message via TextMagic's online, API or email SMS interfaces, TynTec's high-reliability SMS sending (MT) capabilities will power the communication. By using TynTec in this way, TextMagic can take advantage of its local time stamping capabilities, meaning the recipients of messages will always have accurate local time stamps on their received messages. TextMagic will also use a TynTec-hosted long number to manage incoming reply messages. As well as offering high-reliability in message receipt, this TynTec service will give TextMagic the ability to use memorable and marketable numbers.

By deploying TynTec's services at the heart of its products, TextMagic will be able to take advantage of the company's significant geographical reach, covering 400 networks in 160 countries. In addition, the TynTec's promise of high speed (under 15 seconds) messaging transmission will further enhance TextMagic's offering to its customers. TextMagic also takes advantage of a real-time Mobile Number Portability check and reliable delivery notifications.

Priit Vaikma, TextMagic, said: "TynTec offers us everything we need in an SMS services provider - as well as a reliability promise for both sending and receiving, they can give us massive geographical reach at a competitive price point. Our customers use TextMagic to send and receive SMS from their computers - they want their text messaging to be quick, cost-effective, reliable and measurable. Working with TynTec we can offer all of this and more."

Michael Kowalzik, CEO of TynTec, said: "TextMagic has been providing SMS services since 2002, and by using TynTec,, TextMagic are getting the best of both worlds - they get the speed, reliability and reach that we can offer through our unique technical infrastructure combined with a great price point that means that they can maintain their margins in a competitive market."

InVueTXT Chooses TynTec For International SMS Delivery

2008-07-01T14:15:49+01:00

Low-rates SMS provider signs deal with high-quality messaging specialist for global delivery

Mobile messaging operator TynTec (www.tyntec.com) today announces a deal with international SMS provider InVueTXT (www.invuetxt.com) to provide high-quality and global SMS delivery. Following the agreement inVueTXT will use TynTec's enterprise quality message delivery services to transmit cut-price SMS to Eastern Europe, Africa and India

inVueTXT will be using this guaranteed delivery to ensure their customer-base has absolute confidence that SMS will be delivered to the intended recipient, regardless of geographic location. The inVueTXT service allows users to download an application straight to their handset which allows them to send text messages to Africa, Eastern Europe and India. Users also have the option to top up their mobile phones with SMS scratch cards for different destinations. This allows users, especially expatriates, to keep in touch with their family and friends by using a cost-effective, reliable service.

TynTec can ensure each and every SMS sent will arrive at its intended destination thanks to its range of deep-level connections (SS7) into the global mobile telecoms network. This means TynTec is one of the few companies that can ensure delivery of SMS and full visibility of the message trail from creation to delivery, allowing performance to be measured against rigorous SLAs.

Michael Kowalzik, CEO of TynTec, said: "inVueTXT needed to be able to offer users global delivery of SMS with absolute confidence. Working with TynTec means they can ensure that the transmission of each and every SMS is fully tracked and guaranteed to arrive to the target destination within 15 seconds.

Dr. Pierre H. Wilter, MD, inVueTXT, said: "Working with TynTec means we were able to give our end users the best possible quality of SMS delivery at an unbeatable price. As these are the two things that are at the very core of our proposition, TynTec has allowed us make our service a viable reality.

"TynTec will continue to provide us with the backbone of our service as we expand further into new territories."