TextMarks SMS Alerts

I’m sure you guys already heard this first from TC but I don’t think the business model will work in the US. Most mobile phones now have either GPRS, 3G or Wifi — why would one get his latest updates via SMS?

A publisher signs up for a TextMarks account and chooses a price to subscribers (either $4.99 or $9.99 per month). Readers subscribe to the alerts via a Flash widget that’s embedded on a website or by sending a text message to 41411 plus a unique keyword, confirm the subscription on their cell phone, and then receive the alerts. The service is currently only available to U.S. cell phone users , using Cingular, Verizon, Sprint or Alltel services. Publishers decide what news is important enough to send out as SMS alerts. Up to 100 alerts can be sent per month to subscribers.

TextMarks But here in the Philippines, what do you think? I haven’t been updated how Inq7’s SMS alerts work but I guess they’re doing pretty good with that as well. Matter of fact, I’ve actually talked to a CP before about providing RSS alerts via mobile phones and in return get 10% of the revenue. I had reservations and didn’t push thru with it.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

7 Comments

Miguel says:

18 years ago

SMS apps is picking up in the US – like Twitter.

It’s the paying part that they are skeptical about.

You also can’t push messages via GPRS, unless you’re using mobile IM, which is still in its relative infancy.
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Rob says:

18 years ago

Hello Yuga,

Just wanna ask bakit suspended yung isang blog ko sa PTB? eh naka display naman ang PTB button sa blog site ko.

I can’t find your email address so, dito nalang ako nag message sa iyo… anyway, if you want to reply to me personally just send it to robstroy(@)gmail.com and after you read this message you can delete it here…

Thanks,
Rob
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Sasha Manuel says:

18 years ago

I can understand why the US market wouldn’t welcome this with open arms since the carriers still charge on receipt of the SMS messages. Can you imagine subscribing to a blog that posts a minimum 10 per day and you get to receive an alert for each? Gawd. That’s $.10 a pop! Perhaps here in our country we’ll be more open to the idea. That is, if we can bring the Filipino blog readership rates up to make the market a lil bit more lucrative for the app developer. :)

But I’d prefer receiving this kind of alerts than getting horoscopes, if you know what I mean. Hehe.
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Nick says:

18 years ago

The cost is not justified. There are applications out there that just need a little tweaking, and you’re all set to have your posts sent via sms… they are all open source, and it will get the job done quite fine..

I hope if anyone gets wind of an open source application out there, they will be willing to share it to the community..

I think I heard about just this, in the WordPress news/updates…

YOu may want to go to your WordPress dashboard..
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Dan says:

18 years ago

I would really see the future of SMS apps becoming more integrated with Java mobile apps on people’s mobiles. The low-cost access and “fat client” architecture should solve most peoples problems.
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Ronald says:

16 years ago

i hope it’ll be available for philippines.. i’d love to integrate this to my website
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zombie tsunami says:

11 years ago

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