TextMarks will announce a new product tomorrow that allows publishers to charge people to receive breaking news and other information via text messages. It’s available now under a new “monetize” tab on the home page of the site.
To use this, 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.
This is an excellent idea and could be a good revenue generator for blogs and other websites where readers will pay for instant notification of breaking news. The only downside – huge service fees. Carrier and TextMark fees eat up around 2/3 of the revenue, so publishers will only receive $3.00 of a $9.00 monthly subscription. Most of the rest goes to the carriers, and Textmarks keeps 15%.
TextMarks offers other products as well, including group messaging and free one to many alerts. It is one startup in the increasingly saturated U.S. SMS market. Mozes is a direct competitor, and 3Jam, Twitter and others offer somewhat overlapping services. See Marshall Kirkpatrick’s recent overview of eight SMS services for more information.
We’re probably going to be testing this service out in the near future to see if some readers have an appetite for instant notification of breaking tech and startup news.
Seems very strange to pay for a service like this, at least above and beyond what a carrier charges for SMS.
No joke. I’ll just wait till a free service becomes available.
This is very intresting and may be of benefit at mediarati
Why would anyone in their right mind pay for this when you can get site updates via your cell phone through RSS using Google Reader. The company will go to the dead pool pretty quick
This App could be better branded as mediarati or what you think?
Indeed the SMS service market is satured in the US and obsolete in Europe. The problem is that too many services are alike. Some just add a couple of features here and there but the basic is the same. Besides competition, the real problem is that if one costumer sends an unsolicited sms, they risk the shutdown of the shortcode period. Thus 1000 companies could pay for the mistake of 1. The other issue is the cost per sms sent/received. sms aggregators want to much money per sms and they leave you very little margin to make a margin. Third the carriers also usually want between 1/2 and 1/3 of your revenue. Could you imagine a business that wants to survive in that field. The most obvious way out will then be to calculate your desired revenue per user and triple it. Of course once you do it , you are probably going to shrink your user base as less people are going to accept the charges. The ultimate solution as to be very very cost effective if not free to the user and generate revenue through other venues. Also I believe it is not the best thing to charge someone from their revenues, think of APPLE or DELL making money of your computer because you are using it to run an internet business or your internet provider doing the same, the list would go on and on.
So what is the solution? I think I know it, but frankly I could not share it no as I am working on being the competition.
Breaking news by sms? There is so much news everyday and information management would be one of our biggest problems soon. Why would anyone want to pay and get instant news by mobile. How cares?
I am sorry for these guys. At lease they have done something for themselves and have it featured in techcrunch. I wish them the best, but hope they dont end up in techcrunch again … you know where.
Michael, I think the number of RSS subscribers you have shows that people do indeed have an “appetite” for instant updates. That’s quite different from having an appetite to pay for this. Will wait patiently for you to try it and drop it.
Exactly, there is no point in having to pay a subscription fee for such a service other than the regular cost to send an SMS, maybe for some A-list blogs or financial news sites, but for most publishers, there’s no money to be made here.
The crave of humanity for ‘news’ could truly make this new venture to succeed. My only concern is that there more ‘free’ sources of ‘breaking news’ on the web. Why pay for another?
I use services like this extensively, some of which I do pay for. Nobody quite gets it right yet as far as I’m concerned. I would gladly pay a monthly fee for a service that sends me IM and SMS alerts for any number of RSS feeds that I select – if it that company did it right. Here’s what I’m looking for:
1. IM me if I’m online, if I’m not then SMS *and* email me the URL of the feed item if I’m not online (Rasasa and zaptxt each fill different halves of this request)
2. Let me set the hours I want to recieve SMS alerts, outside those hours email me. (rasasa does that)
3. Send me the first 25 charecters or however much is possible from the feed item, not just its title (anothr.com does that by Skype IM but no SMS is avail)
4. let me unsubscribe from alerts for a particular feed by responding to a text mssg
5. don’t send me alerts an hour or two after the item was available – if I select “as soon as it’s available” then send it to me within 15 minutes every time. I hate getting an alert for something only to find that it’s already got 5 comments and 3 trackbacks on it. Experiences like that really mitigate my trust in the service.
6. filter for duplicate URLs, titles or both at my request. (feeddigest can be folded in to existing services if you want to do the leg work)
7. let me exclude particular feeds from my search results. i want to know when my name is used online, for example, but not when it’s in the author field of my own blog.
8. easy integration with Dapper, Yahoo Pipes or some other feed creation tool so I can get alerts from feeds that don’t exist yet would be nice.
9. easy import and export of OPML files.
Is that too much to ask? lol, I trust that if and when more people start using services like this it will be in the interest of vendors to become increasingly sophisticated in what they offer.
This is Ariel Poler from TextMarks. Thank you for the coverage. Wanted to mention that the main idea of this premium SMS alerts service is not to simply deliver regular blog content via SMS. The idea is to offer bloggers the ability to charge for premium content that they might not otherwise include on their blogs, or, for time sensitive content, that they might offer via SMS first. We have heard from many bloggers that, just like many content sites have “premium” areas, they would like the ability to offer premium content on their blogs, and to do so via SMS.
One of the advantages of doing this via SMS is the simplicity of the payment approach through the users’ cell phones. Granted, it is expensive to cover the carriers commission and other costs, but we believe this still makes sense in many circumstances – such as when the consumer has no credit card!
Cheers,
Ariel Poler
CEO
TextMarks
Text AP to 41411 for some words of wisdom!
Paying for new updates?
With everything so free online, I wonder where the business model is.
Maybe in circles where news is vital for the running of your business, but the masses are hardly interrested in news per say, it’s the regonition factor of getting on the front page of digg and/or the recognition of your comments.
Jeff
1) E O Fall is on the right track – look to a mature SMS market i.e. Europe and you’ll see that quote This is an excellent idea and could be a good revenue generator for blogs and other websites where readers will pay for instant notification of breaking news.unquote is a bit premature
and. more importantly,
2) Marshall Kirkpatrick – time for a holiday somewhere with no electricity!
I don’t know why, but I have a feeling that this service could be used by masses too. Something just tells me not to write this service off right away.
Anyways, I’d rather not subscribe to a lot of SMS updates when I can get them on my phone via a Google News alert for free via email.
For now, I’d say it’s an innovative service and could be successful if it listens to exactly what the subscriber would want (Marshall’s list is quite an indication) when they pay to receive alerts.
Cheers!
Hasn’t the lack of success of the old AOL or the new NY Times “premiium” content been enough to put paid to the idea of premium content. As someone above already notes, all blog subscriptions can already be obtained via cell, so why in the world would someone pay to get it via a text only medium.
SMS is the most overpriced service in the digital world – highest cost per bit by an order of magnitude. Why? Simple-carriers and their anachronistic tdm (time division multiplexing) business models. The essence of that business model is to maintain scarcity (that’s why you can’t get more than 6mb down\512 up DSL in most places) so they can charge premium prices for their transport services. Why else do they fight municipal broadband at every opportunity? Why else does it take so long to roll out 3G wireless broadband, when it has been available in Europe and Asia for 5+ years?
Don’t feed the monster by paying for their SMS services.
Marshall, would you like fries with that?
Marshall’s list is impressive. I wonder how much satisfaction you get with all these. Try out a two week vacation to an Australian jungle. Forget all those news alert jargons.
In the end, the users of a service like this would be news-hungry tech-savvy bloggers like you. And maybe there are 15000 (or less) of these in the whole wide world, whose lives and meal ticket depend on news alerts (like which company has received $15 funding from a silly VC).
If Techcrunch (and others) didn’t exist, people will still live fine with the amount of tech news they get. The insider gossips we read of and more, do not make our lives any better.
To Ariel Poter. Premium SMS? The fact of the matter is that you are building a business that is going to work for only a tiny fraction of the market. You are setting yourself to be eaten by the next competitor ( That is ME ) who offers a smaller price per sms. Thus it is going to be a race to bottom of the ocean. Once you are there you are going to be forced to find other business models or you are gone. Y. Because all you are offering is delivery of content. Now why I am telling you this. Because I believe we can all be successful at the same time. Do not entirely focus on charging consumers for receiving alerts. focus on enabling cheap delivery of the content and try to make money off the volume. Creativity in services not pricing.
To E O Fall:
We also offer our services for free – and are seeing some great uses of it, BTW. This paid version is for content providers who want to charge for some of their content. If a blogger wants to offer a free text alert, he can use TextMarks to do so absolutely free.
I agree most content is better suited to be ad supported, yet there is plenty of premium content for which people are willing to pay for…
A.
To #17:
Sure, SMS might be insanely expensive. But it is also a medium which has proven to be very addictive, more so in Europe and Asia than US(we are still playing catch up).
I have met more than a few 15 year olds in India who average 30-40 SMS a day – some even more. And unlike the US where we usually have a packaged-based system(100 sms free etc.), these kids pay 5-10 cents per SMS sent.
There is almost no other medium which has people in mass shelling out money without giving a second thought. I would argue the pricey nature of SMS is precisely what makes it so attractive for most businesses to use it.
-Zaid
I think that it’ll work only for the top bloggers, like TechCrunch. Its too expensive for people to subscribe to on less “buzzing” sites.
This is the dumbest idea ever. With the capabilities of cellphones today, this service is unreasonable. Why pay for updates when you can simply open your phone at anytime and check the site for yourself?
For more unbiased opinions visit http://www.techcrunchme.com
By the way, I love TechCrunch but I disagree on this one.
Well then I apologize.
You are right although most premium content are downloads. SMS have been very successful on the consumer side but i lack to find a real deployment on the business side. I guess we will have to wait and see who will ultimately find the formula. Aggregators and Operators make all the money leaving just a little for developers and the content owners. To make money off sms is not easy, but it is good to have a huge user base and slowly move them into using your sms applis that will allow both users and those bloggers to send and receive rich mobile content ( regardless of size )free of charges.
Many services can be made around SMS.
But all our initiatives have been killed by the low gross margins…. The carrier take so much for a few characters, it is a shame! Last time we requested an offer (Switzerland) up to 50% was take by one of the carriers! Then you have to add the fees and the percentage of the company providing the service (echovox).
We have a box full of projects waiting for a more reasonable margin left to us…
Good luck to these guys…
Marshall’s list is impressive but doesn’t using Textmarks pose a psychological challenge, too? On gut instinct, most people will favor free RSS even if it doesn’t do all the things Textmark does. They need to get away from that comparison and reposition this as a niche thing/tool.
Will people pay? I can’t see it being widely popular.
Here is how I could see this working…
People who signup for this service get stories 10 minutes (or some other time amount) before everyone else. Then it becomes a premium (I think).
Some still seem to miss the point of this service. As Ariel explained, it’s not a RSS to SMS service. The value of the service is to publishers whishing an additional way to monetize their traffic. It’s up to them to make it of value to their readers. This could be done by providing content earlier or providing exclusive content.
Though, I question the use premium SMS rather than handling the billing themselves. I don’t think the few circumstances where it’s beneficial, such as when a reader has no credit card, justify the high commissions and other costs.
Yea this service costs way too much money
I’m not sure that this service will live for a long time lol. Don’t see who exactly is going to use it if you ask me..
I don’t see a great future to this one. It’s just another sms service, we are flooded with thousands of services and messages. This is a good idea, but very expensive.
Not sure what is up with the haters here. Many of whom don’t have a link to their uber-successful startup
.
Jealousy is rampant on this board. Ariel Poler has put together a great product. His price, I am sure, is based on solid research of the market and an analysis of supply and demand.
As for the people who don’t add value to these comment areas, I think MA should start deleting some of these comments as it is quite obvious who is just posting to get a link up.
waste of time is definitely correct this is going to be posted in
http://www.randombull.net
I agree with Bull06
Ari,
I’ve been using textmark for awhile I love it and so do my subcribers.
For blogs it is extremely useful and the possiblitities wide open depending on the information provided.
Hey Im looking for a Job…… any openings in New York.
FisherUSA
Good idea in theory that should become more solid as the technology (Premium SMS) improves, but given the challenges (namely leakage) it still seems like very much of a risky proposition in the short term. I’d be interested in hearing how much better aggregators and carriers have been at reporting revenue vs. last year at this time.
4INFO (www.4info.net) offers this exact service for FREE.
For Publishers:
Go to http://open.4info.net/ and grab a keyword for your blog or rss feed. Users can send a text to 44636 (4INFO) and get the latest info for the feed, with the option to subscribe to update alerts via reply text. Additionally, publishers can add a widget to their site that will allow users to sign up for mobile alerts directly on the blog/website.
For Indviduals:
Go to http://www.4info.net/ and create an account for your mobile phone. You can then set up alerts for any rss feed. There a whole suite of others alerts also, like sports (NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, NASCAR, NCAA BB & FB, PGA), weather, stock price changes, horoscopes, etc etc (you can also query for this info by sending messages like “nba lakers” or “weather 94301″ or “MSFT”).
If you want to read this comment, it will cost you 5 cents
Hi,
For the Europeans reading this; there’s another service called Zong which I covered on my blog. In short it does the following:
RSS2SMS,
Z-Quiz (setting up an SMS quiz),
Z-Vote (voting per SMS),
Z-Box (comments/feedback per SMS)
But Z-Pay is definitely a new interesting angle…
Z-Pay allows you to sell content (ebook, whitepaper, prime content etc…) from your blog/website and readers pay by SMS.
I tried the RSS2SMS service and it work very well. Now I am writing up some good content people will want to pay 2/5€ for and I’ll try the Z-Pay thing.
Zong, the company, was also present at 3GSM
Here is a similar free service that is already available…
http://www.txtms.com
SMS-based services are very viable, however this one is a bit lacking. As noted, there are already quite a few free options that let you receive notifications from RSS feeds, etc. so the idea that end users are going to pony up $4.99 or $9.99 per month is stretching it. The value proposition to has to be quite compelling, and the average blogger or individual publisher probably doesn’t have the type of content that is going to generate enough subscribers to make this a worthwhile service to offer. Those who do have premium content that is a viable sell in some volume of note would be best served by building their own SMS service in-house and working directly with a gateway, or partnering up with a mobile distributor/developer who will eat a lower percentage of revenues. There is no need for a publisher with content that can generate significant sales volume to give up two-thirds of revenue. As such, I would predict that TextMark gets stuck serving publishers who don’t have content that has significant appeal to a large audience. Maybe if they get enough small publishers they can make this a decent business, but I doubt it’s going to be a great business.
I don’t think they can make money by this. The information have to be free!
Can anyone see what the difference is between the $4.99 and $9.99 price plans is?
Personally, I would never want to pay for it as a reader. If they offered it as an account which you could then get text messages for ANY blog [news site] you want, then maybe I would consider it, but definitely not on a per-site basis.
The US biased audience and tech biased crowd here does not realize that SMS is not just a service but the main communication link for most people outside the USA. 99% of these people do not have RSS readers or even know what they are and they use SMS much more than surf the web on their phones.
I think the other reason some people above are negative is that it was posted on TechCrunch and nobody can see themselves paying Mike’s posts
1.I can pay for this if it comes in handy.Many people would like if they blog is browsable through their mobile.As far as I know there is one plugin available for making your mobile compatible for being accessed through.
2.As more number of people are tending to access net through mobiles, it can came in handy may be not now but thats the future.Blogs being accessed from mobiles is closer. 5 or 10$ is not much if they are really intended towards it.
However with the ease of internet it might not get a boom now.It has to wait till the industry shifts more on mobiles.Its predicted one day Mobiles will replace laptops.Thats the Future
Mike,
4Info already does this for free. http://open.4info.net/ They’re UI isn’t quite as slick, but whatev. Free vs. Fee. Hmm…I think most people will choose Free. I believe 4Info’s plan is to share rev from ads that are syndicated across blog content, sort of like adwords via SMS. Of course, I don’t work at 4Info…so I’m just guessing. I’m sure they could tell you.
I find Textmarks an excellent service. Today I have created two new textmarks (free ones):
– alexa (http://www.textmarks.com/ALEXA): send alexa yoursite.com to 41411 and you get the latest stats for your website from alexa
- eyeos (http://www.textmarks.com/EYEOS): send eyeos to 41411 and you will get an update on how many users are registered until this very moment in the http://eyeOS.info free public server.
There are so many possibilities ….
Seems to me to be a question of price elasticity. The vast majority of the market for sms news alerts would be I would guess 100% elastic – i.e.: if its not free, it can be dropped quickly. For a select few market segments (probloggers like Marshall) there would no doubt be value in timeliness worth paying for, but not for the mainstream.
If I were textmarks, I’d work on identifying market segments for who this proposition has value, and tailor niche offerings to each.
For example: Fund Managers and Finance industry people would be a good target for a premium SMS stream of financial news. So – lock down some good content producers into exclusives, and rock & roll.
IMHO, skip the mass market paid product.
SLANTTed view of this story:
http://slantt.n...mark-sms-alerts
How’s it different from Sybase 365?