Earlier today, I wrote about Hotxt, which offers cheap messaging via a Java application over GPRS. I concluded that I was a little luke warm about it, despite their high profile investor, and that it had usability issues and would be more ballsy if it were free.
SMS Text News linked to the story and MobHappy reader (and Tex2me founder), Stuart McWilliam left a comment, both pointing in the direction of Tex2Me.
Tex2Me has been launched on a shoe stringn in December 2005. It actually overcomes all my criticisms of Hotxt, in that it offers a free service (apart from operator data charges, of course) and it’s very clear and simply explained. They don’t have an equivalent to Hotxt’s Out service, which means it’s easy to understand - both parties need to install the app and then they get free messaging. End of story.
I spoke to Phil Jones, one of the founders of Tex2Me and he says that the basic service will always be free and that they plan on introducing premium services in the future. This was the formulae that worked for Skype and I think it stands a good chance of succeeding here too.
Bearing in mind that Tex2Me have (unwittingly) overcome all my issues with their richer rival, I think it’s only fair to give them the red hot accolade I was withholding from Hotxt. I expect they’ll be getting a few calls from some likely investors pretty soon.
What about http://www.mogotxt.com - whom offer free texting to among friends from web? Comments?
and of course, there’s Juize too - http://www.juize.co.uk. Although I tried to download it a couple of days ago and the website wouldn’t work properly.
Yomego tried this as well a year or two ago and the customer didn’t catch on - their proposition was about long texts plus personalised animation (amongst other things) and I suspect it was just too early for that to appeal, too complex a proposition and there was limited compatibility with handsets at the time.
Polanski - computer-mobile free texting is not really a new phenomenon. It’s been around for about 6 years from memory, with offerings from big and small players.
The problem is that most of them can’t leverage the service into a business model as all it does is burn cash.
Russell
I left a similar note on another post. Take a look at http://www.simtext.com which is similar to the above but also have an online interface. Sits between tex2 and hotxt in terms of pricing.
hmm, some blatant self-promotion: check out http://mabber.com
we think SMS is outdated, mobile IM is the future.
Russ,
yes, true! Web to mobile is not new - but the fact that they are using shortcodes and incentives seam to break the mold, and as sending from web actually earns you creadit - its a new angle on things that excited me.
Interesting to read Helen’s comments about Yomego and the difficulty in the handsets.
It seems though as they have managed to take the text and real time animation succesfully into the media environment.
Very impressed with http://www.ess.yomego.com that creates football alerts through Eat Sleep Sport. The character Big Frank has also been taken up by Ladbrokes.
I also read yesterday that DA Group (the company behind Yomego) have been signed by Channel Five to create a Virtual Geoff Boycott who will provide Desk top alerts for the Cricket with real feeds from his voice. Clever stuff. . . and keeps things going until the mobile technolgy is up to speed
While hotxt compares itself to Skype, it was app2app how Skype started. Therefore Tex2Me is more like Skype, though I am sure hotxt will come up with further developments. Some features hotxt needs are along the lines of mabber.com and probably SMS to blog and similar.
From Cambridge, home of hotxt,
Klaas Brumann
http://fotoinsight.co.uk
http://fotoinsight.com
The Tex2Me service is really good - they have done some great upgrades recently and its a great service.
Andy