I have a thought.

I was just reading an article on RCR Wireless about political text messages, Obama’s in particular. In it, author Colin Gibbs writes, “But in the course of a few weeks, Obama’s text-messaging effort has grown from a national curiosity to a bona fide new way to register volunteers, create stickiness with potential voters and keep supporters in the loop.” This got me to thinking.

In two weeks the election will be over. Someone, Obama or McCain, will emerge the victor. Afterward, there will be no more campaigning, no more debates, no more rallies or fund raisers. In short, there will be nothing more to receive a text message about.

But does it have to be that way? Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I found myself sitting at home, contemplating life’s big problems. No, not how to find happiness or balance work and family or reach spiritual enlightenment. No, those are trivial dalliances. Yesterday I was contemplating how I was going to get over this super-duper combination of sinus infection and bronchitis that I’m currently suffering from while simultaneously finding the time and energy to create the most fantastic duck costume ever…by Friday. (And you thought your life was hard.)

Of course the best way to do this would be to

1. Go to a Doc in the Box and be diagnosed with near-death syndrome.
2. Visit a pharmacy and pick up my prescribed cocktail of antibiotics and cough syrup to be taken twice a day for four days.
3. Awake from my haze just in time to rent a giant duck suit from a costume shop so I can waddle my way to a Halloween party.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s an update from Wireless Week about Verizon’s proposed 3-cent charge to mobile content providers:

“Verizon Wireless said today that contrary to reports last week, it has not decided to increase per-message text fees for content aggregators from 1 cent per message to 3 cents.

“The prospect of an increase is just one proposal and Verizon could not act unilaterally to implement it, a company spokesman explained this morning.

“Initial reports last week cited a letter from Verizon to aggregators in which the wireless operator said the increase is effective Nov. 1.

“That was a misstatement, the nation’s second-largest wireless operator said today.”

I just read that Verizon will begin charging content providers $0.03 for every message they send to Verizon subscribers.

According to the article on RCR Wireless, the carrier said that “the new fee was necessary to cover the carrier’s overhead in delivering MT messages.”

The fee will apply to standard and premium programs but not to free-to-end-user, mobile giving, or non-profit organizational programs.

That’s all, folks. For more information, check out the article.

Holy moly. Guess what I just read.

According to Nielsen, “the average mobile subscriber in the US sent and received more SMS text messages than mobile telephone calls during Q2 2008.” And on top of that, this is apparently the second consecutive quarter in which this has happened.

According to the table below, mobile users in the 13-17 age range sent 1,742 texts but made only 231 calls this quarter. Kids under 12 sent 428 texts and made only 137 calls.  My age range, the 25-34 bracket, sent an unimpressive 331 texts and made 239 calls. I guess that sounds about right to me. I text a lot, but I talk a lot too. Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t tell you how little I care about sports.

I couldn’t care less that it’s football season, and that’s kind of scandalous if you know anything about me. I really should care about football—I’m from a football-crazed family. And I really should care about Alabama football—I went to UA as an undergrad and played a pretty big role in the team spirit department.

But the thing is, I was always more interested in watching the half-time show and never gave a rip about what came before or after it. And despite the fact that everyone who knows me knows that I don’t care, I still hear the question “What did you think of the game?” and I never know what to say.

What’s the point, you ask. The point is that I just signed up for ESPN’s sports alerts. Why? Because now I can find out who won without actually watching any football at all. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s something I’ve never thought of until now: mobile phone service in national parks.

Now that’s probably because I’m not a national park kind of girl. But if I happened to find myself in one, you can bet your deer tail that I’ll want the ability to make a call in case there’s an emergency. But at the same time, I don’t want some tourist yapping their trap while I’m trying to commune with nature.

Apparently Yellowstone National Park has similar concerns. According to the Associated Press, it’s “attempting to balance competing demands for cell phone service and preserving the park’s tranquility.”

The park has developed a plan that would increase cell coverage while keeping the negative effects on the animals to a minimum. And the tower near Old Faithful would be moved to a less visible site at a nearby water treatment plant. (Read the article here.)

Seems like a good idea, Yellowstone. May I suggest disguising the towers as trees? That might help. Although the birds might get confused.

Good afternoon, everyone!

I just read an interesting article on RCR Wireless about the class-action antitrust lawsuit filed against the top four US carriers, which alleges that the carriers have “conspired to fix, raise, maintain or stabilize prices of text-messaging services.”

According to the article, the lawsuit questions the rise of the text messaging costs which doubled from 10 cents to 20 in just a few years.

But what I found most interesting was the article’s conclusion, which provided a juicy mobile statistic:

According to mid-year figures by industry association CTIA, 75 billion text messages are sent every month. Overall, CTIA said wireless operators generate $27.5 billion a year from wireless data, a big chunk of which is generated by text messages.

75 billion messages–that’s a lot texting. I think my sister is responsible for at least a 800 of those.

It seems that carriers are cracking down on content providers who aren’t following the Mobile Marketing Association’s guidelines when it comes to premium messages and content. According to RCR Wireless, Sprint was the first carrier to begin fining non-compliant content providers and supposedly other carriers are following suit:

Sprint Nextel Corp. earlier this year became the first U.S. carrier to formally tie revenue shares to business practices, warning that partners who repeatedly violate Mobile Marketing Association guidelines—by incurring high refund rates, for instance, or not reporting billing errors to the carrier—can forfeit every dime and lose their short codes.

“Non-compliant short code campaigns will receive penalties up to and including program termination from Sprint Nextel Boost networks,” the carrier said in a confidential five-page memo. “Conversely, revenue-share incentives may be applied for programs performing will on policy compliance.”

Other U.S. carriers are quietly following in Sprint Nextel’s footsteps, according to Jay Emmett, general manager of the Amdocs subsidiary OpenMarket, which distributed Sprint Nextel’s memo and handles billing issues for the carrier. (rest of article here.)

So, maybe the Obama VP text message didn’t turn out like it was supposed to. And maybe I’m a little embarrassed because I hyped it up. But rather than rant about how horrible it was (because that’s what I thought I’d do that Saturday morning), I’m going to try, try to be objective about. Therefore, I’m going to use a numbered list because nothing is more objective than a numbered list.

1. Sending a text message to 2.9 million or so people at 3:24 AM ET is generally a bad thing. I’m a little strict about this, so I think sending a text after 7pm in most cases is pushing it (unless it’s a severe weather warning or a snow day announcement or about a dozen other reasonable things that I can’t think of at the moment). Therefore, in my mind, any time during the dark AM hours is off-limits. You risk waking up people in middle of the night (like this guy) and losing their trust, their business, and maybe even their vote.
2. Sending a text message containing information that the press leaked hours before is generally a bad thing, too. With mobile marketing, you should try to send timely, valuable information. Therefore, if everyone already knows the information you would like to present in 160 characters on their cell phone, then you also risk losing their trust, their business, and yes, maybe even their vote.

Read the rest of this entry »