Will SMS Applications Thrive?

Short Message Service (SMS) text messaging is now standard on mobile phones. (Multimedia Message Service, or MMS, is an enhanced messaging service that adds the ability to attach pictures and sounds to the messages you transmit.) It is widely used. But will it survive in anything resembling its current form?

I am a big fan of Google SMS. I was at Academy buying shoes on a Sunday evening and decided to go to Oshman's in the hope they would have a better selection. Would Oshman's be open on a Sunday evening? How could I obtain their phone number so I could call them? If I used my mobile phone's directory assistance service, it would cost me $1.25. I ended up using Google SMS to determine Oshman's phone number.

I wrote 'oshmans austin texas' in a text message and sent it to 46645 (GOOGL on most phones). Within seconds, I had received a text message back from Google SMS with the address and phone number of Oshman's. Very convenient! Yahoo has a similar service.

I can imagine many useful applications of this sort. There are many situations where we are on the go, need some information, but don't have access to it without calling someone to have them look it up. But I know of only two such services: Google SMS and Yahoo's similar service. And I don't know anyone else who has ever used them. Why haven't SMS applications taken off?

Comments

Brandon said…

I think dodgeball is pretty cool but only a few people are using it. May want to try it: http://austin.dodgeball.com/index.php

Sun Sep 04, 12:12:00 AM 2005

Roger L. Cauvin said…

Oh yeah, now I remember you and Cote mentioning Dodgeball about a month ago.

Sun Sep 04, 09:56:00 AM 2005

Why Spreadsheets Suck for Prioritizing

The Goal As a company executive, you want confidence that your product team (which includes all the people, from all departments, responsible for product success) has a sound basis for deciding which items are on the product roadmap. You also want confidence the team is prioritizing the items in a smart way. What Should We Prioritize? The items the team prioritizes could be features, user stories, epics, market problems, themes, or experiments. Melissa Perri makes an excellent case for a " problem roadmap ", and, in general, I recommend focusing on the latter types of items. However, the topic of what types of items you should prioritize - and in what situations - is interesting and important but beyond the scope of this blog entry. A Sad but Familiar Story If there is significant controversy about priorities, then almost inevitably, a product manager or other member of the team decides to put together The Spreadsheet. I've done it. Some of the mos...

5 Ways Companies Make Product Decisions

In the last blog entry, we reviewed the four problems that companies face, or are trying to overcome, as they make product decisions . Now we'll look at the ways that most companies make their product decisions. Companies that develop, market, and sell products and solutions make strategic and ongoing tactical decisions. They decide what features to include in their products, what messages they will use to communicate the value of their products, what marketing tactics they will use, what prospective customers they will target, and many day-to-day choices. Whether or not these decisions are deliberate or ad hoc, most companies use some combination of the following ways of making product decisions. (A downloadable "map" that summarizes the product decision landscape is included at the end of this article.) Customer Wants Product decisions based on feature requests, focus groups, and what prospects and customers say they want. Companies are selling products to ...

Is Customer Development Pseudoscience?

The “Science” of Lean Startup Lean startup practitioners embrace the scientific method, seeking the "truth" about what business model and strategy will lead to product success. We do so by: Formulating hypotheses Crafting and running experiments to test them Learning from the experiments Iteratively feeding our learnings back into revised hypotheses Sounds pretty scientific, at least in spirit, doesn't it? Yet this process actually neglects a key ingredient in the scientists' mode of operation. To identify what’s missing, let’s examine “customer development”. Customer Development Steve Blank is one of the pioneers of the lean startup movement. He introduced into the lean startup lexicon the term “customer development”. Customer development consists of sessions and interactions with customers to test hypotheses. For example, a product manager might interview a prospect, asking if she agrees with the product manager’s hypotheses about the problems she faces or the ...

Cauvin

Search This Blog