Social networking on SMS

We have done all the social networking on the Net. Now we can do it on the mobile phone. The people at Webaroo has started a new service called SMS Gupshup through which we can forward SMS messages to a group of friends.   

This is how it works. You send a SMS to GupShup, it gets forwarded to everyone who is subscribed to your group. The messages are also saved on the website and can be viewed on your group’s page. You can join and subscribe to other groups and get SMS alerts whenever messages are posted by the author. There are already many groups on SMS Gupshup.

The service is free and users have to only pay the cost of SMS to their mobile service providers.

Cool service. Just that I had one concern - and that was the expenditure involved. Online social networking works well because, among other reasons, people do it on their PCs at their offices. If people use cyber cafes, the Rs. 20 per hour rate is still okay. For home users, the Internet charges starts at a mere Rs. 400 per month. No matter how many messages you exchanges with your friends, you wouldn’t normally say you have burn a hole in your pocket because of your online social networking.   

Now here, a SMS costs around 50 paise to Rs. 2 per message. For youngsters and even for many of those who are on prepaid, this amount can a big deal.

I shared this concern with SMS Gupshup. They responded:

• Our take is that for 50 paise - Rs. 3, a person reaches out to 10-20 people depending on the amount of people they want to keep in touch with.

• Another way you can look at it is that people can subscribe to certain groups and that tends to be a one time cost for that person.

Valid points.

Now I am wondering if we can leverage this service in our work/professional life? Suppose we are working in a team on a particular project and need to update all the team members on the field about the status of the project frequently, maybe we can use this service to SMS developments to the team. A cheaper alternative and a time-saver to SMSing everyone individually.

This reminds me of Twitter. We can do the same with it. However, the benefit here is that you will save on the cost of sending a SMS message through an Indian mobile service provider instead of sending your updates to Twitter’s UK number.

Two weird ideas:

1. A blogger, or an online group moderator,  can send updates to his/her readers/members through SMS. 

2. A PR professional send updates on developments to his/her set of journalists.

Can we think of some more?

This entry was posted on June 15th, 2007 and is filed under social networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.