HEY THIS SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT IDEA. I THINK I’LL TELL ALL MY FRIENDS ABOUT IT RIGHT AWAY!

I’m one of the authors of the ‘efficient crank calling tool’ mentioned in the post.

I think this is an Interesting concept. With proper checks and balances this could be a useful service. When TechCrunch first covered us, we didn’t prevent calls from 10PM - 6AM, nor did we offer an permanent opt-out for the potentially annoyed party. Now we do, and we still do 1000+ calls/month.

There are definitely some valid use cases here, assuming they address the potential for abuse.

I kinda like the concept of being able to reach my friends no matter where they are (eg, make sure they at least get the message, even if they don’t reply to it), but there’s no way in hell this is the way to do it.

Also: gotta sign-up to opt-out? Uh, that’s going to be trouble. I _know_ that’s going to be covered by anti-solicitation laws somewhere.

Mike,

I don’t see what the problem is here. If you watched the video you would understand what it’s intended for. It’s clearly not meant for regular everyday communication. It’s really meant for when you need to reach everyone ASAP.

“Everyone, So and so is hosting a party wednesday. Email Sarah for info.”

Clear now Mike?

“Trumpia is just stupid and I pray that PR people never hear about it.”

*laugh* I’m glad you wrote this story, now they won’t hear about it for sure!

I could see myself using this. I have random meet ups with my friends all the time. Sending a message like “Meet me at the top of the parking structure and bring every superball you own” is a pain to do for each individual. I can see this being a hit on college campuses and with high school kids.

I think we’re in a time that startups have to be more careful with how they use they information of the contacts of its users. A lot of times people spam all contacts agressively, I don’t think that that’s the solution. Tagged is probably the only one who’s getting away with it.
We all know the stories of Rapleaf, Quetchup (or something like that) is spamming away everybody as well.

In this particular case of trumpia, I think it is a bad idea to blast all your contacts on 3 different platforms, I do think it may come in handy to contact your friends at once, but they have to be a little bit more intelligent on how they do that. There is this project called rasasa which send you the most important rss feeds to whereever you are, it is definitely not intrusive and might be a good way for trumpia to go.
It basically works like this: it will push news to your messenger IF you’re online, if you’re not online you can choose how you want it, via txt message or email (in case you have a blackberry like phone).
This might be a more sophisticated solution to contact your friends at once.
Although, in the end a text message will suffice 99.9% of the times to contact anybody directly, so they just might skip the IM and email. The problem then is that it is not cool anymore, there are tons of companies doing that and than you get no attention….

Ouch, this is kinda harsh. We have already thought about some of the potential problems mentioned in this article. We do have several ways to prevent this from becoming an annoying tool as well as being abused by spammers.
First of all, you don’t have to sign up to opt-out. You can get removed from the sender’s contact list any time by just clicking a link. You get notified when someone adds you to their contact list with the option to remove yourself. But of course the person adding you had to have all your contact info already. I mean if someone has your cell phone number or other contact info, they can contact you without using Trumpia and if they don’t they can’t contact you via Trumpia.

We are still under development and our next release has permissions so not everyone will be blasting you on all modes. (of course all the regular spam filtering stuff will be eventually included) Also if you receive the blasts on your IM then it won’t be sent to you phone, unless you want it to. So although you have all your tools set up, it doesn’t mean you will get bombarded. If you are online, then it’s much more convenient to just reply to an IM than a mobile text message or even email.

So ultimately Trumpia will be a way to send and receive messages and event invitations on whatever tool is good for you at that moment. And the sender can send using whatever tool is good for them at that time. Actually we have this already programmed but took it out for the time being due to some complications and as well as for simplicity since we are target marketing to college organizations for now.

Trumpia is still under development and we are focused on making sure our service is not an annoying “Hammer” nor a tool for spammers. We aim to provide a way to bring together all the goods of instant messengers, email, and mobile text as well as web based tools overcoming the limitations of each individual communication tools used today.

What about plugging twitter into this thing? NONE OF MY FRIENDS-RELATIVES-COLLEAGUES-WHOMEVER-IN-THE-WORLD SEEM TO KNOW I’M SNEEZING RIGHT NOW.

Yeah I’d have to agree with David…pretty harsh post… =(

When I was at UCLA I was president of the Korean club. It was impossible for me to contact 100 people last-minute to organize things so I was forced to call everyone individually. Our staff would have really appreciated something like Blast so that with one Blast we could contact everyone right away to let them know that we’re having a bowling night in an hour (and of course in order to receive Blasts from us members would have to opt in by giving us their contact info). In the video it depicted the leader of a circle of friends, but Trumpia is really a powerful tool for organizational leaders. Right now our initial target market is college student organizations, fraternities, and sororities.

Also, because we are doing very targeted marketing, we haven’t rolled out all of our features yet to keep it simple for college groups and organizations to start using it. Trumpia will of course have permissions to control who gets to blast you or not. We will also have cascading delivery so you don’t get hammered with the same message at the same time if you don’t want to.

Oh and I want to mention again that you can remove yourself from a contact list with just one click WITHOUT having to sign up. Signing up just allows you control your tools and contact info. For example, if you change your number your friends can still contact you even if you weren’t able to tell all your friends that you got a new number.

Hope this helps clarify… =)

David & Derek - I’m sure you will find a willing audience for the service, but any use of it involving me I would consider spam. I like the fact that you can remove yourself completely from the service without registration though. Hopefully that will be prominently shown on the home page.

I think this would never be an adequate solution. If you want to reach someone you don’t need this. If you can’t reach someone by mobile (call sms) they probably don’t want to be disturbed.

And let’s face it. You can’t decide who is to reply to your attempt for contact. The receiving end usually decides if they want to be disturbed by you or not. It is your counterpart that decides on the urgency of the matter. If they chose to ignore you, well there is probably a good reason for it.

I like the idea of a “shotgun broadcast” to get the word out. Something I could see social people doing many times a day. Mike is inherently introverted — so I can understand why he would be opposed. I remember back in the early days he would would just break out into a rash during any of those “reach out an touch someone” commercials.
So ” Reach out and Blast someone” — good luck Trumpia!

Thanks iHero and others for the nicer brighter comments! =)

Every spammer’s dream come true.

Hi Alexander - Yeah I agree with what you’re saying. We still think that if you want to contact one person, then just use your phone. Trumpia, however, is more for communicating with a large GROUP of people. Imagine if you needed to contact like 15 people. Then what?

Also, of course receivers will always decides if they want to be disturbed or not, but with Trumpia you can choose to not be disturbed without having to turn off your phone completely. It’s also a good way to allow people to contact you without having to give out your contact info. If someone adds me as a friend on Trumpia they know they can contact me via mobile text, IM, and email, but none of my sensitive contact information ever gets exposed. And of course you can block people at anytime so that there’s no other way they can bother you.

=)

Dear Michael,

We believe you have the right to express your opinion and we respect them. But we do have one request.

If you could at least correct some of the incorrect statements made in the article which gives readers false information such as not being able to remove yourself unless you sign up.

And if you could be nice enough to mention that there will be permission settings so it’s not just anyone that can blast you as well as cascaded delivery so it’s more like trying to deliver on different tools until you’re reached rather than hammering you all at once. (The next release is planned for sometime after some marketing to college organizations.)

I feel that you have every right to say how absurdly stupid you think our site is, but I don’t think readers should be given false information on things like features and functions.

Thanks =)

If you’re considering using Trumpia, you can also check out loopnote.com, which is very similar but might alleviate some of the concerns that Mike had.

I’m a PR guy, and I’ve just heard about it. Brace yourselves.

This is nothing new. Group2call.com has been doing this for ages, in fact we were the first company to offer blast initiating from a text message. Maybe Trumpia tackled this int the wrong way because we’ve carved a hugely successful business around this, providing our services to schools, search and rescue teams, tornado alerts and more. Check us out at http://www.group2call.com.

This looks like a good tool to use if you’re part of a grassroots organization (political, social, etc.) and you want to quickly mobilize your members. I’m going to use this.

Agree with most here, way too harsh Mike. Many alternatives exist though, tough place to play.

Hey dickhead, you just gave this stupid service some free advertising. I want the last 5 minutes of my life back

Hey Generic Guy - yeah this would be a great service for grassroots organizations especially when you to mobilize people right away. Thanks for the support!!

The homepage says that blast is patent pending. What new technology/process is the patent based on??

To Derek & David: I don’t know your service well enough to know if it’s useful or spam (although my initial reaction is that I’d be annoyed if my friends start communicating to me this way) but I wish you guys luck…. remember, you just got a write-up from TC (which most start-ups would kill for), so enjoy the 15 minutes and use it to build positive momentum rather than being too defensive.

Thanks for the advice Matt =)

Oh and I believe our patent is for our Blast ENGINE

so you’re writing about it and drawing attention to it because????? why??? just so that nobody can say you missed it? that’s just lame…

ever hear of a distribution list for email? most ppl have email on their phone or FW to SMS anyway. this is really an iteration on the twitter platform.

Hey Tomas - in the target demographic that we’re going after (college) the users don’t check email as frequently as IM and mobile text.

Think about what happened after Virginia Tech. Students complained that they didn’t know what was going on even AFTER the school had sent out the mass emails because college students and younger generations don’t check email frequently.

Of course for “older” generations of web users yeah email would suffice. And yeah people have email on their phone but what percentage of all students do?

Also, I’m not sure but with Twitter can you create different groups that you can Blast at once? Like a friends group, a family group, etc.

I can see how Blasting people would be very annoying if people started using it like they use Twitter, but we’re more for urgent messages and last-minute event invitations, or for real-time alerts etc.

David & Derek - Maybe some lessons on marketing and communications, or leaving it to pros will avoid any misunderstandings next time and will help you spread out the “right” info at the right time.

Here’s an application you could consider when marketing this. I could see this perhaps useful for a youth sports coach trying to get the word out quickly on a cancellation, change of venue/time or other info.

Hi Ed - yeah that would be a great way to get the word out for a cancellation or a change of venue.

Actually my friends use it to Blast everyone to see whose down to play basketball in an hour since people can respond to the Blast from any mode of communication, making it easy for the person setting up the event to coordinate.

It’s a great way to Blast out something like “Anyone who wants to run 5’s meet up at the student center at 2″

Sounds like spam. Bottom line, is if the user getting “blasted” didn’t sign up to the site they shouldn’t be doing this, not to mention requiring the user to sign up to remove themselves. All they are doing is trying to pump up their user base.

Seems people forgot the phrase “quality, not quantity” when it comes to building website user bases.

Mr. Arrington,

Can you please at least make the correction that you don’t need to sign up to be removed and that you do get a notification if you get added at which time you can decide not to get any blasts.

Everyone reading this still thinks we force sign up to get removed. This is completely wrong.

Thank you.

How to lose all of your readers, sponsors, and friends, in real time.

Continue to bash new products, which may be backed by big investors you’re somehow affiliated with, without any mention of any upsides to using the products.

lol…I should try that
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

David and Derek,

Good luck with your application. As Guy learned it, negative publicity is publicity too.. Anyways as the new co-editor of TC and other put it, Mike is too stubborn to change his opinion and I can only wish good luck to you that he corrects his posts

Thank you, Tom and many other people who left positive comments.

Perhaps, we neglected bring out obvious upsides to using the service. Since Michael likes Grand Central, I would like to make one analogy to Grand Central. If Grand Central offers “lifetime phone number” that forwards calls to other more private numbers, Trumpia offers “lifetime ID” that forwards messages to more private email, IM screen name, mobile text number.

Trumpia does NOT publish any of sensitive or private user contact information to anybody including even to friends. The reason why a user is able to Blast out to friends is because either the user already has the contact information or the friend has signed up for Trumpia on his/her own volition.

I wish we can talk about what the service is intended as opposed how it can be abused by a bad apple. For any small chance of problems, we are making continuous efforts to prevent any misuse just like you still use email despite spams and solve problems of how to block spammers.

Michael, we just want a fair chance… I wish I can talk to you…

Ken Rhie, President, Trumpia

David - sure, just show me the feature in a screen shot (the youtube video says what I wrote).

I’ll use it for alerting my fans to gigs and concerts. I’ll also use it for alerting band mates to rehearsals or new material I want them to work on.

I think it’s cool!

TC is becoming more like TechCritic. Not every person has a blackberry and plenty of people use instant messaging and text more than email. I see the potential of it, sorta like evite, but faster.

Guess I am one of the few people that agree with you, Mike. This sounds like the most annoying service in the world!

Again — kids are going to love this — nothing like spreading the word quickly about a party.

Plus the whole “blasting” term is awesome.

“Blast first, ask questions later” — Master Blaster

One question: how are they going to monetize this?

I am sick of so-called web 2.0 companies who launch without a purpose. Their main goal seems to be to get as many users as possible and worry about monetizing later.

One way to monetize something like this is to include targetted ads along with these so called “blasts.” However, users will absolutely hate this and stop using the service altogether.

I predict a deadpool within 6 months.

I don’t know about blasting friends and I see everyone’s concern about how it could possibly be a spammer’s dream BUT I think it would be a useful for families, especially me when I need to tell my folks and brothers that I won’t be home for dinner or maybe to avoid a certain route home if there’s traffic! Hey maybe you could sell the technology to a news channel and traffic reports could be blasted to you on a specific route??? Hmmm…

I can see how this has the potential to be misused. But if you’re giving your phone number/personal e-mail out to people that it would annoy you to be contacted by, it begs the question why you gave it out in the first place.

This sort of thing would be really useful for organising parties/nights out/whatever as me and my friends always leave planning things to the last minute. A simple message like “We’re all meeting in the pub at 9 then going on to a club” would be great to get.

As long as the opt-out is linked in the e-mail/IM you get and/or there is a way of opting out via sending an SMS it sounds like a good idea.

Hi Michael,

I can see how our choice of a few vocabularies in the video can potentially be misunderstood. A regular user of our system would agree with us.

I don’t think this supports HTML so I guess I’ll just put the links here to the screen shots.

The first screenshot is the notification I would get when someone adds me to his/her contact list. There is a remove link on the bottom of the email. See second from the bottom.

http://trumpia.com/addnotice.jpg

The second screenshot is the page that appears when the remove link is clicked. This removes me from the contact list.

http://trumpia.com/removenonmember.jpg

Please note that this is our beta and we still have some key features to add. We are in the process of introducing spam control and Blast permissions. We will also re-introduce cascading delivery of messages so that you get it via mobile text only if you aren’t online. Most importantly, we plan to add more features to prevent mis-use of our site along with some additional usability improvements.

So while we are working on finishing up the rest of our key features, we started marketing to college clubs and organizations since they can benefit right away with what we have so far.

Anyways, I hope these screenshots clarify some mis-information and show that we have thought about the issues you mentioned and that we have, are, and will continue to work on those issues.

We never ever wanted our service to be used to spam or annoy people nor intended the site to be interpreted in the way we are described in your article.

I hope you see that our objective actually is to tackle and ultimately overcome the very issues you brought up like spam, privacy, etc. while bringing together the benefits of today’s communication tools. Developing the website and software is easy, it’s making it safe, convenient, and useful that’s hard and worth shooting for. =)

Thanks =)

Hi Michael,

I don’t think this supports HTML so I guess I’ll just put the links here to the screen shots.

The first screenshot is the notification I would get when someone adds me to his/her contact list. There is a remove link on the bottom of the email. See second from the bottom.

http://trumpia.com/ addnotice.jpg

The second screenshot is the page that appears when the remove link is clicked. This removes me from the contact list.

http://trumpia.com/ removenonmember.jpg

Please note that this is our beta and we still have some key features to add. We are in the process of introducing spam control and Blast permissions. We will also re-introduce cascading delivery of messages so that you get it via mobile text only if you aren’t online. Most importantly, we plan to add more features to prevent mis-use of our site along with some additional usability improvements.

So while we are working on finishing up the rest of our key features, we started marketing to college clubs and organizations since they can benefit right away with what we have so far.

Anyways, I hope these screenshots clarify some mis-information and show that we have thought about the issues you mentioned and that we have, are, and will continue to work on those issues.

We never ever wanted our service to be used to spam or annoy people nor intended the site to be interpreted in the way we are described in your article.

I hope you see that our objective actually is to tackle and ultimately overcome the very issues you brought up like spam, privacy, etc. while bringing together the benefits of today’s communication tools. Developing the website and software is easy, it’s making it safe, convenient, and useful that’s hard and worth shooting for. =)

Thanks =)

Who the hell decides to hold a bowling night for 100 people with ONE hour’s notice? That’s a horribly lame use case.

And these people who don’t understand how their phone numbers get into the hands of the ‘wrong’ people clearly have never worked in the direct marketing industry. It’s ALL out there if you’re willing to pay for it. Yes, even your cell phone numbers.

Woohoo bowling party in my pants in 5 minutes! Everyone knows now! woo hoo!

I feel the use for it with organizations and groups. In my case, I am always the person initiating events and I hate manually doing things and some people just respond with different modes of communication. At my store, http://www.attic2zoo.com, we use it to keep in touch with our customers as our products are very time sensitive and limited edition. When merchandise arrives, our customers are very eager to assure they get their merchandise first and have the first crack at styles. When they sign up for Trumpia service, they do this willingly to be in the mix of knowing live time what is going on. How nice would it be to get blasted exactly when certain places get like Iphone restocks or PS3 or Halo 3 restocks, etc… 90% of our customers sign up willingly so I guess its a proven tool with our business plan