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July 5, 2006

TxtDrop offers SMS widget for MySpace

Marshall Kirkpatrick

46 comments »

Web based text messaging company txtDrop announced today a new widget for MySpace profiles (and other web pages of course) that creates a button to deliver an SMS message to the page owner’s phone. This means that message senders don’t have to pay for each text. The service is available in the US and Canada only.

I’m not about to post a test button here! (In part because it’s the kind of ugly only a MySpace user could love.) I can imagine, though, that many people could find this very useful. Meena Trott from SixApart says that the future of social media online lies in very small groups - if you’ve got a friends-only profile page or some other way to reasonably expect a manageable number of messages then this might be just the service for you.

Oliver at MobileCrunch goes in depth on serious security concerns and his thoughts on how this could be a more viable service. Stay tuned for more coverage of the growing tidal wave of widgets.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. MobileCrunch » txtDrop promises free SMS and MySpace to Mobile SMS but Security Issues Abound

    July 5th, 2006 at 3:31 pm

  2. MobileActive Limited Corporate Blog » Blog Archive » txtDrop promises free SMS and MySpace to Mobile SMS but Security Issues Abound

    July 5th, 2006 at 4:32 pm

  3. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » txtDrop、MySpace用のウィジェットを提供

    July 5th, 2006 at 6:15 pm

  4. De Gardener

    July 5th, 2006 at 10:44 pm

  5. Comparing Code » TxtDrop offers widget for MySpace

    July 6th, 2006 at 9:36 am

  6. New Media Sense » Short Stuff for July 6th

    July 6th, 2006 at 2:29 pm

  7. BIG Mobile research » TxtDrop offers SMS widget for MySpace

    July 7th, 2006 at 6:41 am

  8. BIG Mobile research » TxtDrop offers SMS widget for MySpace

    July 7th, 2006 at 6:41 am

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Comments

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  1. urban

    July 5th, 2006 at 2:07 pm

    i’m always afraid when i use things like this that the number i’m putting in is being sold to millions of telemarketers.

  2. Paul

    July 5th, 2006 at 2:12 pm

    They were hardly the first to do this. Sites with this capability have been (almost literally) a-dime-a-dozen in the SitePoint marketplace for a while now.

    For example:
    http://www.sitepoint.com/forum.....xt+myspace
    http://www.sitepoint.com/forum.....xt+myspace
    http://www.sitepoint.com/forum.....xt+myspace

    (FYI, none of these auctions are mine)

  3. Nick Gonzalez

    July 5th, 2006 at 2:19 pm

    A simple web text messaging solution seems like a useful feature, but I don’t know how big of a business opportunity this is for textDrop. Cell companies, like Verizon, already allow web-based text messaging (e.g https://www.vtext.com/customer_site/jsp/messaging_lo.jsp), and it seems that txtDrop’s “database driven” solution could simply be a wrapper posting to these other services based on the number’s carrier. Looking at effort to payoff though, this project will probably make some coin for the owners in the short-run, if it catches on with MySpace and they manage drive traffic to the ads on their site.

  4. Colin Strummer

    July 5th, 2006 at 2:21 pm

    how the hell does that work surely the network need to get pay by somebody, or am I being really thick??

  5. Paul

    July 5th, 2006 at 2:24 pm

    On the smaller sites, the services usually use the email adresses provided by service providers. If your phone number is 1-555-555-5555, most service providers will set up an email adress of 155555555555@service-provider.com which is directed to your SMS.

  6. Peter

    July 5th, 2006 at 2:34 pm

    Yeah, I think Paul is right… also I don’t see a privacy statement, so it looks like the information you enter will be sold or something - also, I duno why u would want this on MySpace, or why u would have a MySpace account to begin with lol ;) - Also, I’m sure ur friends can already simply SMS u from their cell… or better why, simply call you.. SMS sucks to begin with.

  7. JD

    July 5th, 2006 at 3:18 pm

    I think this is great. I’m enjoying watching the popularity of web widgets. Ha, stickin’ something like this on a MySpace page could get ugly though. It would make more sense for it to be placed on a private profile which is great that we all can do that now.

  8. danny

    July 5th, 2006 at 3:20 pm

    Services like this has been around 4ever…I don’t see what the big deal is..

    For example, if you want to text your friend on verizon…just send an email msg to theirfone#@vtext.com.

  9. /pd

    July 5th, 2006 at 3:22 pm

    Not sure whats so exciting abou this widget ??

    I have this on my personal pages.. for over a year now !!

    So what exactly is new here ? its just old technology being recyled in new clothing.. big deal Marshall !!

  10. Paul

    July 5th, 2006 at 3:24 pm

    I can confirm my above guess that it is using the email service.

  11. Marshall Kirkpatrick

    July 5th, 2006 at 3:39 pm

    Why is this a big deal? I think it’s interesting at least that mobile tech is getting widgetized into the social networking space. I also think that Trott’s thoughts on small circles makes this relevant. Yes, you can email a person’s sms number, but it’s much easier to do a one click free message through a person’s own profile page. Also, the SMS numbers aren’t visible to senders in txtdrop (should have mentioned that) and that’s interesting.

  12. Christian

    July 5th, 2006 at 3:47 pm

    I pay for each SMS received. No thanks.

  13. txtDrop.com

    July 5th, 2006 at 4:36 pm

    Hi everyone,

    Sorry for the lack of a privacy policy at this point. I’m working on drafting one up at the moment, but I can tell you that we do NOT and will NOT sell, share, or give out any information obtained through the use of the site and that will be made very clear in our privacy policy.

    While our technology behind the site is nothing new, we have never seen anyone else allowing you to place their code on your own web site while keeping your number private from the whole world, which was our goal with this “widget.” We just thought it may be something people were interested in using with the increasing popularity of social networking sites!

    Thanks for your support!

  14. Skeptic

    July 5th, 2006 at 4:58 pm

    Oh yes. I just love to hand over my phone number to a company that a) won’t give their real name, b) provides only an email address for contact information on their site, c) places text ads in the middle of their pages (even above their product description) and d) is throwing together a privacy policy at the last minute.

  15. arjun

    July 5th, 2006 at 5:49 pm

    myspace already has a mobile feature that lets you subscribe to messages, etc, via you cellphone - why is there a need for this?

  16. Lucky225

    July 5th, 2006 at 6:19 pm

    In response to /PD, this is why it’s new;

    http://www.passivemode.net/upd.....orrow.html

    Txt2day only uses base64 to encrypt the phone number, whereas txtDrop stores the phone # on the server. txtDrop will *NOT* be selling the phone numbers to anyone, and will be issuing a privacy policy soon confirming this. I personally know the owner, and as a big privacy advocate, I can confirm there is nothing shady going on. Your numbers are stored securely on the server and the string is a random string generated when you sign up.

  17. Kevin Burton

    July 5th, 2006 at 6:26 pm

    Hey Marshall.

    I’m going to put a TxtDrop widget with your cellphone on Tailrank :)

    Ha. Just joking of course. I’m really going to use Arringtons!

    Anyway… this reminds me of the time where I found out that Sprint SMS URLs were GETs and I pasted a link on my blog. 15 minutes later all the bots come crawling and my phone had about 30 txt messages.

    Fun! At first I thought people were playing games with me.

    GET is fun!!!

  18. Jonathan Grubb

    July 5th, 2006 at 8:31 pm

    This seems like a great service concept, though from what I’m reading here this isn’t the company to do it. Myspace users aren’t known for caring about privacy or stability though, so I may be wrong.

    The carriers generally have safeguards in place to keep services like this from working on a large scale. Email-to-sms is a money-losing service for mobile carriers since most don’t charge for message reciept. They do it hoping that some percentage of mobile users will reply with a mobile-originated message, which generates revenue for the carrier and is sometimes shared with a thrid party like TxtDrop. The problem here is that there’s nowhere to reply to, thus no chance for revenue.

  19. Aner Ravon

    July 5th, 2006 at 10:48 pm

    The ingredients of a good desktop SMS service must include, IMO:

    1. 2 way conversations
    2. Absolute privacy and spam protection
    3. Smart routing between web and mobile
    4. Full reliability
    5. Operator and IP interoperability.

    See more thoughts at http://www.degardener.com

  20. Ashish

    July 5th, 2006 at 11:46 pm

    “Yes, you can email a person’s sms number, but it’s much easier to do a one click free message through a person’s own profile page.”

    Mike, I believe the argument of some might be this widget takes about 1 day to code, and therefore isn’t much to get excited about (that, and a few other reasons).

  21. Don Wilson

    July 6th, 2006 at 12:22 am

    Why exactly did this make it to TechCrunch?

  22. Charlie

    July 6th, 2006 at 12:26 am

    I live in the UK so I can’t use this service on my own mobile, so I put in a friends number and it created the widget code for… surely this is wrong?

    I’m sure this could be abused in so many ways.

    I suggest that they need to generate a random key which is sent to the mobile the widget is being created for, that can then be checked in the widget creation form.

  23. Clarence Wooten

    July 6th, 2006 at 12:49 am

    Interesting… especially the statement… “Meena Trott from SixApart says that the future of social media online lies in very small groups”. I agree 100%… that’s what CollectiveX is all about — Group-centric social networking.

    http://www.collectivex.com

  24. Guk

    July 6th, 2006 at 1:55 am

    All I see from these services is that it is being abused and privacy being violated.

  25. /pd

    July 6th, 2006 at 6:05 am

    oh — very good question Don !!

    FWIW, Google just pulled their SMS Mobliel search folio in the UK.. :)-

    go figure…

  26. Erik Kalviainen

    July 6th, 2006 at 6:51 am

    Hey! I just had an idea. Shockr.com. A Myspace/blog widget where you can get feedback from your friends/community via an attached USB electric-shocking device.

  27. Chris

    July 6th, 2006 at 10:15 am

    I just tested this on a fake .html page and *ofcourse* it doesn’t tell you who its from except txtdrop.com. So how is this useful if the sender doesn’t tell you who they are?

  28. jr

    July 6th, 2006 at 12:09 pm

    put your name in the message body

  29. Noah Winecoff

    July 6th, 2006 at 12:15 pm

    I’d use it just so I wouldn’t have to go to each carrier’s website to send a text message. I don’t get charged to receive msg’s, just to send. If they are doing things the way I think they are I wonder if txtdrop.com would be blocked by these carriers once they see a lot of traffic coming from it. *shrugs* who knows.

  30. lady

    July 7th, 2006 at 6:17 am

    Please http://www.411sms.com has been doing this for over a year now and they have more features too!

  31. txtDrop.com

    July 7th, 2006 at 12:36 pm

    http://www.txtdrop.com/privacy.php

    Highlights for everyone:

    TxtDrop.com will not release any personal contact information to advertisers or any other 3rd party.

    TxtDrop.com will NOT send unsolicited text messages or make phone calls to any acquired cell phone numbers. At no time will cell phone numbers be sold, traded, exchanged, or given to any other 3rd party.

    TxtDrop.com gathers only what information is necessary for completion of text messages. Information is used solely for transmitting text messages, and will not be sold or shared with any 3rd parties. In addition, the site may gather broad statistical information such as (but not limited to) number of website visits, page views, ad clicks, number of messages sent, and popularity of cell phone providers. This information is used to help us better understand how users use our site.

  32. Dan

    July 7th, 2006 at 1:03 pm

    Wow–this is old. I bought this same script for $40 on sitepoint (and that included the domain name). I would have sent you my URL if I knew it would make news on TechCrunch! Here it is without any changes: http://www.outsms.com Could look just like txtdrop.com with a little touch up.

  33. txtDrop.com

    July 7th, 2006 at 10:19 pm

    Dan - your site and others that use that same code bought off sitepoint all display the persons cell phone number in the source code though. With txtDrop at least your cell phone number is not available to ANYONE.

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  35. Lawrence

    December 19th, 2006 at 1:14 pm

    Can anyone recommend me?
    I need an free sms service for my homepage.
    I am seeking one with the option to change the design(for a bit).
    Thanks a million!

  36. steve campbel

    February 19th, 2007 at 8:47 am

    i use http://www.create-ringtone.com to create and send FREE custom ringtones, wallpaper, mp3 and video files to cell phones around the world

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