We've had this capability at Radio Handi, a group communication service, for quite a while now. With it you can create a group about any topic or peer group, and then communicate via SMS chat, and also voice. Just send the command .voice while an SMS chat is in progress and everyone is invited to jump into a free conference call. SMS is great, but it has a lot of usability issues that get in the way of real-time communication.
Dmitry
· 3 years ago
and who is paying for the extra SMS?
Wai Yip Tung
· 3 years ago
"texting is the technology of the future"
I can't help but this sounds rather optimistic. It is like saying telegraph is the technology of the future.
Brian McConnell
· 3 years ago
I can say from my experience with Radio Handi that SMS chat is one of those things that seems like a good idea on paper, but in reality it doesn't work as well as you'd think.
The main problem with SMS chat is that SMS is not really a real-time medium, both because of delivery delays, but mainly because people are often busy doing other things and don't see texts come in immediately.
When we tested our group SMS product, what we found is that conversations usually fell apart because many people saw the messages much later than other people did. It is, however, a good way to quickly blast a message out to a group, but it's really not a very good medium for an ongoing conversation. We thought it would be, but it turned out not.
The other issue is that unless you can get the carriers to pay you for SMS traffic you generate (they very rarely do), it's an expensive service to offer.
Andy Jagoe
· 3 years ago
3jam is about extending the basic text messaging functionality to allow people to send messages to groups of friends on an ad hoc basis--but for the price of a single text message. Reply-all group text messaging, correctly conceived and implemented, generates substantially higher text message usage.
We don't do broadcast messaging, we don't do audio streaming, and we don't do public discussion groups. 3jam is focused exclusively on ad hoc reply-all group text messaging for you and your friends. We welcome additional feedback and we hope you enjoy the service.
RisingSunofNihon
· 3 years ago
I think this sounds like a fantastic service and am sure it will do well. I definitely have a need for this type of group messaging capability, so where do I sign up?!!
Andy Jagoe
· 3 years ago
Thanks, everyone, for the comments. You can sign up for the service at http://www.3jam.com.
If you're a Treo user, all you need is to install a free and lightweight client app. Read today's posting on Treonauts to find out all the details. We will be launching simple clients for many other devices. Please stay tuned.
JSP
· 3 years ago
how do they make money?
Matt Marshall
· 3 years ago
Sorry folks, for not including the business model stuff. I've updated, but basically 3Jam wants revenue share from carriers, and prices each message as one message (so that if you message four people in a group, it only counts as one message, not four messages).
Have also updated with the exact link for the Treo download.
Terence Pua
· 3 years ago
Nothing new here...Filipinos have been doing group SMS for over 3 years now. US is just catching up here.
gustaf
· 3 years ago
Upoc.com started doing this in the US in 1999. SMS is soon an obsolete technology for everything but maybe P2P messaging.
Harshal Vaidya
· 3 years ago
In India, we've been doing group SMS from a long time. Every provider is capable of handling group SMS. Since I can make a group SMS on my Sony Ericsson T610 here in NY..I'm sure providers here are also capable of that. I'm not sure how is this a great new service. Maybe americans haven't yet figured out how to use group SMS. ;-)
Lex
· 3 years ago
Thanks, Terence. We'll keep that in mind next time we're all in the Phillipines.
Matt Marshall
· 3 years ago
Still looking into all these services being talked about. In each case, they appear different from 3Jam. Upoc, for example, provides a public Yahoo-style group, but the group/friend creation model can't be done on the fly.
Also, people questioning SMS should tell me what platform will take its place. Yes, there are all kinds of newer technologies/platforms out there, but they are all splintered or have yet to take off.
An example from the UK: Users of supposed 3G phones who have access to mobile IM and a richer feature-set on their phone actually SMS more than 2G users (Jagoe tells me the figure is 85 percent, compared to 75 percent, respectively). Despite having pre-loaded software on their phone, use of products like mobile IM is lagging at about six percent. Still insignificant compared with SMS, though sure, that could change some day.
cg
· 3 years ago
i've pretty much had this capability (more or less) on my Cingular RAZR phone for about 13 months. It gives me the ability to send to multiple people in my address book, and also has a "reply all'' function. However if you get one of these messages you often don't know that there are multiple recipients, making the reply-all feature worthless.
Anon
· 3 years ago
I suspect any decent phone has this feature as part of the SMS application where you can select multiple addressees. Smartphones (e.g., Nokia) even allow the creation of groups in the address book.
Ofcourse, one could argue that this is the SMS equivalent of a mailing list, but given the "short" nature of SMS messages do we really need a SMS mailing list? Moreover, these "SMS" mailing lists expire at the end of a day unlike an email mailing list.
An interesting experiment - as long as some VC is bankrolling it. :)
P-Air
· 3 years ago
Matt, you may also want to check out Mozes and Msgme (fm Waterfall Mobile) for others playing in the SMS space w/related or similar applications.
Dr_Dave
· 3 years ago
I have a Treo and I can select multiple recipients for a text message with the standard SMS app on my phone. But I know that replies sent back by my friends don't go to everyone in the original message - just me.
CG, what does the reply-all function on your RAZR do? Can't seem to find anything like that on my Treo.
This seems like such a useful app that I'm surprised nobody has come up with this before! Going to check out if Mozes and Msgme do reply to all as well.
eyederma
· 3 years ago
Washington Post goes mobile Two weeks after saying it would look for new, digital outlets for its products, The Washington Post Co. has launched mobile phone versions of three of its publications.
The Post says the new content sites, which provide access to the newspaper's online edition as well as Slate and Newsweek magazine, are designed for viewing on mobile phones and PDAs. Access will be free and not require any registration.
Earlier this month, the Post moved Newsweek editor Mark Whittaker to the new position of editor-in-chief of New Ventures at its Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive division.
Whittaker, who'd been Newsweek editor since 1998, is now responsible developing wireless and multimedia ventures, as the Post (NYSE: WPO) looks for ways to offset its declining circulation and stagnating print advertising.
The Post's digital sales have been rising steadily, with online publishing revenue up 36 percent last quarter.
A few years ago, here in Peru we used to have a service called Blah! a kind of mobile chat that used with nicknames instead of phone numbers, and allowed to send group messages too, but only to registered users and to certain mobile carriers. It worked mostly in Latin America, some US carriers joined later. The service is long gone now, so 3jam is an interesting new alternative.
I've been using 3jam for a couple of days with my friends and it seems much better than what we've used before. It is cheaper, easier and the most important thing: it allows us to send inter-carrier group messages paying for a single one. (Group messages using the Group feature available in mobile phones are priced as multiple texts here).
Nick
· 2 years ago
I've tried all these different services, including 3jam. I found most of them too complicated to use and not enough features.
I use Peekamo.com, their solution is easy and keeps my phone number private. The archiving is a bonus, since I don't like to keep all my messages on my phone.
All Comments
I can't help but this sounds rather optimistic. It is like saying telegraph is the technology of the future.
The main problem with SMS chat is that SMS is not really a real-time medium, both because of delivery delays, but mainly because people are often busy doing other things and don't see texts come in immediately.
When we tested our group SMS product, what we found is that conversations usually fell apart because many people saw the messages much later than other people did. It is, however, a good way to quickly blast a message out to a group, but it's really not a very good medium for an ongoing conversation. We thought it would be, but it turned out not.
The other issue is that unless you can get the carriers to pay you for SMS traffic you generate (they very rarely do), it's an expensive service to offer.
We don't do broadcast messaging, we don't do audio streaming, and we don't do public discussion groups. 3jam is focused exclusively on ad hoc reply-all group text messaging for you and your friends. We welcome additional feedback and we hope you enjoy the service.
If you're a Treo user, all you need is to install a free and lightweight client app. Read today's posting on Treonauts to find out all the details. We will be launching simple clients for many other devices. Please stay tuned.
Have also updated with the exact link for the Treo download.
Also, people questioning SMS should tell me what platform will take its place. Yes, there are all kinds of newer technologies/platforms out there, but they are all splintered or have yet to take off.
An example from the UK: Users of supposed 3G phones who have access to mobile IM and a richer feature-set on their phone actually SMS more than 2G users (Jagoe tells me the figure is 85 percent, compared to 75 percent, respectively). Despite having pre-loaded software on their phone, use of products like mobile IM is lagging at about six percent. Still insignificant compared with SMS, though sure, that could change some day.
Ofcourse, one could argue that this is the SMS equivalent of a mailing list, but given the "short" nature of SMS messages do we really need a SMS mailing list? Moreover, these "SMS" mailing lists expire at the end of a day unlike an email mailing list.
An interesting experiment - as long as some VC is bankrolling it. :)
CG, what does the reply-all function on your RAZR do? Can't seem to find anything like that on my Treo.
This seems like such a useful app that I'm surprised nobody has come up with this before! Going to check out if Mozes and Msgme do reply to all as well.
Two weeks after saying it would look for new, digital outlets for its products, The Washington Post Co. has launched mobile phone versions of three of its publications.
The Post says the new content sites, which provide access to the newspaper's online edition as well as Slate and Newsweek magazine, are designed for viewing on mobile phones and PDAs. Access will be free and not require any registration.
Earlier this month, the Post moved Newsweek editor Mark Whittaker to the new position of editor-in-chief of New Ventures at its Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive division.
Whittaker, who'd been Newsweek editor since 1998, is now responsible developing wireless and multimedia ventures, as the Post (NYSE: WPO) looks for ways to offset its declining circulation and stagnating print advertising.
The Post's digital sales have been rising steadily, with online publishing revenue up 36 percent last quarter.
The new sites are at www.twp.com, mobile.slate.com and mobile.newsweek.com. Content will also include access to archives for both the Post and Newsweek.
I've been using 3jam for a couple of days with my friends and it seems much better than what we've used before. It is cheaper, easier and the most important thing: it allows us to send inter-carrier group messages paying for a single one. (Group messages using the Group feature available in mobile phones are priced as multiple texts here).
I use Peekamo.com, their solution is easy and keeps my phone number private. The archiving is a bonus, since I don't like to keep all my messages on my phone.
Check it out, http://peekamo.com
Is anyone aware of these products in terms of efficacy and legitamacy? - http://steroidssupplier.com
Excellent products!!
kind regards