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Posted by Fox on September 8, 2008 at 2:32 PM

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

Posted by Fox on August 26, 2008 at 2:36 PM

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

Posted by Fox on August 14, 2008 at 3:47 AM

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

Posted by Fox on July 22, 2008 at 1:05 PM

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.

Posted by Fox on July 22, 2008 at 12:50 PM

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.”

Posted by Fox on July 22, 2008 at 12:42 PM

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

Posted by Fox on July 18, 2008 at 8:23 AM

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.

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