BeamMe.Info Offers Information Sharing Via SMS
Duncan Riley
11 comments »
BeamMe.info offers a web page to SMS service for sites looking to offer users an alternative to writing information down.
BeamMe.info works by site owners placing a BeamMe button on their website next to relevant information users might want a copy of, for example next to address information. Users click the button and are then prompted to enter their cell phone number (most countries are supported), and the information is sent to their phones (Information in the text message is predetermined by the website owner, not dynamically pulled from the site).
The service comes in two flavors: ad supported or paid. The free ad supported version means end users also get an advertisement with the SMS they receive. The paid version sees website owners paying for every SMS sent by their users; the price ranges from a couple of cents through 20 cents per SMS depending on the country a user is sending the SMS to.
The service has built in spam protection, with limits per IP address and account holders are able to limit the number of SMS messages sent to the same phone per day.
BeamMe.info is pitched as a way of enhancing user experience:
By putting Beams on a website publishers are adding value to their content or service. Allowing visitors to mobilize their website content, saves them the hassle of printing things out or writing them down. This extends the interaction lifecycle long after the visitor has left the website. There are obvious environmental benefits as well.
Pics from the BeamMe.info tour as follows.
reminds me of a service called “pocket this” from years ago.
You can do the same thing for free and without ads by simply emailing a short message to the phone. Most phones have an email address (usually @.com) that you just email to for free and without ads.
Now I wonder how many millions of dollars of funding this website has raised.
i like that it is free for the end user. most services expect you to pay around 55C to get the info.
i think this will could come in handy next time i go house hunting
I’m just excited for all the telemarketing once they sell my number.
Nice service and great interface…but I don’t really understand why should a publisher implement the “button”?….they will sell adds based on the publishers content page.
There is a similar service – http://www.Moblin.com They transfer all content types: Image, Video, Text to any personal hand set WW and they actually generate real revenues to the publisher since the content is being sold for a premium price to the end user. As much as I know, Moblin give around 20%-30% revenue share to the publisher. ( I think premium prices are between 2$-3$, not sure…).
As a publisher…going to try them both. BeamMe for the textual content and Moblin for the images.
Moblin’s image sending tool includes cute features that let the user’s personalize the wanted image by giving them a cool Cropping & Designing feature.
Interesting…I just blogged on a somewhat similar topic at http://banking-on-it.com/?p=27 in which I mention a technology called Zapcode. That allows users to walk past a physical location and use their phone to quickly scan, download and decipher a lot of content into their mobile phones.
So whereas this technology allows for easy web–>mobile phone porting, Zapcode allows for physical–>electronic.
I see the value in BeamMe.Info, don’t get me wrong, but for me the real pain is where I’m in a situation where I *can’t* write something down, such as when I’m out and about in real life. Will be interesting to see if BeamMe.Info ventures into this physicla–>electronic territory. Surely someone is going to….
@rh: Twitter still hasn’t sold my number off to telemarketers yet…though it may just be a matter of time. haha
It’ll be interesting to see whether or not they offer something like what Moblin does in the future (seems like a logical progression to me).
I think the thing to really watch is the advertising side of things…. the mobile advertising market is yet to be tapped.
It does seem like a lot of whiz with little bang. However, certain things might be good to get quickly without looking up the email address of the persons phone since that’s network specific. You could email a summary of product reviews to yourself before you go to the store…maybe the time is right for self-phone spamming…
Getting information send to my phone faster than I can write it down… that a no brainer for me, being able to send mobile URL’s / bookmarks etcs to myself for use when im on the road for free is also very handy… and for free without having to open my email client