Ricky’s back again with his Blykwatch update…

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Hola readers
Well this edition was probably going to be pretty boring, a simple update of what messages I received and that’s about it. However, today (Sunday 11th May) has made this edition an interesting one.

Firstly let’s tackle the network problems, currently BLYK’s SMS servers are not working correctly and is sending multiple copies of each text messaging sent, but it is also sending multiple copies of brand messages, very very annoying! I picked this problem up in the forum, as you know BLYK is not my main number so as a result I very rarely send SMS with the service, however I just sent a test to myself and I have received it a total of four times so far. I know BLYK is new and problems are bound to occur, however I recommend they have a service status page on their homepage or to let people know by email or SMS so they know there are issues. So far there has been no date given to when this problem will be fixed. BLYK are achieving great results in terms of response to ads, however for it to be a real success they need to sort out this issue ASAP if there are problem with the network people will not be as keen to sign up if BLYK is known as being unreliable.

The second big thing is that BLYK may be taking the issue of data quite seriously. For the regular readers of this mini blog you will know I regularly rant about data all the time, for those of you who read the main blog as well will know that the founders of BLYK do not believe that their target audience wants mobile internet! Personally and also many members of the forum, disagree with this and there are large amount of threads asking for some data allowance or competitive bundles. As a result of this I created a poll asking if they would like data as part of their allowance and what they would use it for, the poll has been up for a few days however today I received a phone call from a member of BLYK staff who moderates the forum called Kyle. We know that staff at BLYK read what I write in this column but also we know in the past they have been very quick to sort out any problems, so the call was no surprise. Kyle was very supportive of the poll and said it was a great thing, however pointed out that I did not ask whether members would be willing to lower their text amount or call allowance. I agreed with him that the survey was flawed however I handed over the account so he can see the responses I had received so far! He has also agreed to set up a new poll that would be more accurate. He told me to leave this in his hands and he would get a new poll up in the next few days. It’s great to hear that BLYK are actually listening to its members, usually the response on the forum is that the suggestion will be passed on to head office.

Are BLYK looking at this more seriously because I write this column? The answer is probably yes, however at least the issue of data is now on their radar! I hope in the future I will have good news to report!

No Messages until the 28th April 2008

Monday 28th April 2008

A sms brand messages advertising the TV show Celebrity Rehab on Fiver, there was also a mobile internet link with ability to download a trailer for free! Happy Days, much better then giving me a mobile link that I cannot click on as I have no credit! (Something they have done in the past!! )

Tuesday 29th April 2008

An MMS brand message from a band called The Envy Corps, with a small sound clip! A sms from t3 wanting to know if I wanted to read a review about GTA 4! Of course I replied back and I received a mini review off t3 in a MMS!

Wednesday 30th April 2008

I received a MMS money saving tip, telling me if i had some of student loan left or if I had an interest free overdraft then to put this into an interesting building account and I can make money! There was no company associated with this message and I found it odd why BLYK would recommend its users to do this!

Thursday 1st April 2008

A SMS from BLYK letting me know the competition they are running to win a trip to the USA to see a band is being extended! Pretty cool, I defiantly made sure some of my mates used their invite codes!

Friday 2nd April 2008

I got a sms telling where I can download the new Coldplay track for free from their website (www.coldplay.com) and the release date of the new album!

Monday 5th April 2008

I got an MMS fashion forecast telling me what I should wear and the expected weather of the upcoming week, I also got a sound clip from the band Parka’s upcoming album!

Tuesday 6th April 2008

A SMS from t3 asking how much I paid if I bought In Rainbows by Radiohead for, and I received a MMS back from t3 telling me the average price paid £287, it also promoted Coldplay’s new free song from their new album!

Wednesday 7th April 2008

Refill Day! 43 Minutes, 217 Texts and 5 new invites to invite my friends to BLYK! I also received a profiling SMS from BLYK asking if I used the BLYK website? I replied yes and I was sent another question on how it could be improved! I replied back saying the forums the forums are really badly designed, but also BLYK site does not like Firefox and as a result I have to use IE!

Thursday 8th April 2008

A MMS from STA Travel, this week offering me a trip to South America for 439GBP and I also was sent a discount code that gave me 20 GBP off when I spent over 150 GBP. They also sent me an 0871 number which I can ring for free with my BLYK balance (COOL) and a standard web link! (NOT COOL! Why not a mobile link BLYK)

Saturday 10th April 2008

A MMS from The National Lottery, telling me to open an account online and I will get 5GBP credit, they even sent a free mobile link with it! Great I was thinking over the mobile site pretty much tells me the same as the MMS they sent me, so to do anything I would have to go to a computer to sign up! RUBBISH!

Sunday 11th April 2008

I got a MMS from The KOOKS today, saying that I could get a free wallpaper for my phone, well I replied back and I actually got a free wallpaper and also some information about the release of their new album! Pretty Cool! I also received a profiling sms asking which sports brands I liked!

That covers the last two weeks of my usage and interaction of BLYK. If you are interested in some of BLYK’s campaigns and their response rate you should check out The BLYK media site!

As usual if you have any question please feel free to post them below, or free to email Ewan (ewan@smstextnews.com), who will pass them on to me. I also just want to say a massive thanks to all the good press the column has had recently its fantastic to hear that people who are not enjoy in the age demographic can see what is happing with BLYK!

Blyk watcher Ricky is back once again with what’s been happening the past couple weeks.

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BLYK goes Innovative!

Hello it’s time to update you all on my past two weeks of BLYK watching, at the end of the post two weeks ago , I said I wanted BLYK to be innovative well as you read on you will find they only went and delivered. The other thing is that the column has changed from being weekly to fortnightly!

I will jump straight in (as Ewan would say) and you can read my additional comments at the end.

Monday 31st March 2008

No brand messages!

Tuesday 1st April 2008

April Fool’s day and BLYK took part by sending its members a message if they wanted ‘Touch of Spring – BLYK’s air freshening scent directly through your phone’s speaker’, well I obviously decided to play along and say yes, thinking they would send me a cheesy ringtone. Instead I got a message back saying April Fools! It seems like the advertising team and Ewan have a similar crap sense of humour! Ha Ha!!

I also received a brand MMS from Nizlopi (JCB song Fame) sending me a short clip from their new album! It’s ok however it’s no JCB song!

Wednesday 2nd April 2008

A SMS telling me I had been entered into a draw to win an intimate Nizlopi gig! I also received a MMS from The Kooks about their new album; it has a small sound clip. It sounded really good so I need to put it on the student shopping list, for when my student loan comes through!

Thursday 3rd April 2008

Another competition SMS from BLYK asking for a film review in less than 160 characters (1 SMS), however I have not been to the cinema recently so I did not reply.

Friday 4th April 2008

SMS advert from Beat Stevie Crew, if you read my post about their last advert http://www.smstextnews.com/2008/02/blykwatch_-_paranoid_diarist_absinthe_and_a_student_that_actually_does_essays.html, you will not be surprised to hear that I did not take them up on their offer to see their latest clip. I also received a few MMS adverts from Heat magazine.

Saturday 5th April 2008

SMS Advert from BLYK asking if I wanted to receive messages from gambling services, I replied Yes however I hope the SMS was only sent to the BLYK users over the age of 18. It would be worrying if they did not, anyway I replied with Yes. They sent me another SMS with a free click through able link (WOOO!). However they page after was chargeable so, again BLYK teased but did not offer the full experience!

Sunday 6th April 2008

REFILL DAY!!!

Monday 7th April 2008

No messages!

Tuesday 8th April 2008

A MMS from Lethal Bizzle (one of the original artists to join up with BLYK), sending out the dates of his tour! Great, love the fact they sending me useful information!

Wednesday 9th April 2008

No messages!

Thursday 10th April 2008

BLYK sent me a MMS informing the winner of the film competition from the 3rd of April and they sent the review out as well!

Friday 11th April 2008

BLYK sent me a MMS advert reminding me the different methods of getting a BLYK invite code, and that I get 5 a month! It seems that BLYK are on a recruitment drive! I also received a MMS telling me about the Rolling Stones movie, which is out in cinema’s today which a normal web link within the message (rubbish)! I also received another t3 review!

Saturday 12th April 2008

I said at the start BLYK has gone innovative and today proved it! Firstly I get a SMS telling me that some brand messages may contain a code that can give you discount or a freebie (always a good word in the student dictionary), all I have to do is show the code to a shop that has a pay point terminal! About an hour later my phone bleeped and a got a code for free bottle of Lucozade! WICKED absolutely wicked, just what I wanted a freebie! BLYK is scoring massive points! To make my day even better they offered me a free ringtone from Jamster, however I had to pay the GPRS charges. With no credit on my account I was unable to do it! Finally to finish the week they sent me a profiling question asking which social networking sites I used, I replied with facebook and they sent me a link of facebook’s mobile site, and reminded me I would have to pay data charges!

To summarise my thoughts of BLYK of the last two weeks they are doing some really cool things and I can imagine when they set up the network this is what they had in mind! The idea of codes by SMS for freebies and discount is amazing; I am yet to try my Lucozade code however I will trying it next time I see a shop with pay point! There are a few niggles like if they send me a click through link it should be free and if they offer me a free ringtone this should include data charges! They also seem to be listing to some of the suggestions I make in this column i.e. more innovation and sending out the winners film review for all to read, instead like last time with the joke competition posting on their blog!

If BLYK sort out the click through ad’s and including a bit a data in the free allowance I can really seeing BLYK being a massive success!

On a final point if BLYK are delivering on my suggestions, my final one for this week would be for an n95 for the writer of BLYK Watch!

Antti Öhrling, Co-Founder of Blyk, was at the APA conference yesterday discussing the latest advertising trends.

This video is worth a look if you’d like a good introduction to what Blyk, the ad-funded MVNO, is doing. You’ll get some excellent stats (29% response rate!) and some example adverts together with example responses from the Blyk customers.

(Thanks Ricky)

By the way, BlykWatch 8 will be published shortly.

Back once again is Blyk Master Ricky ready to instill his great Blyk wisdom upon us.

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Sunday 16th March 2008

A SMS from MTV Base telling me about some special shows this week! Kind of Cool!

Monday 17th March 2008

Firstly a MMS informing me of that the band Operator Please (I still have never heard of them except from BLYK) is releasing their album and they highlighted that Zane Lowe (radio 1 DJ) and NME think they are good. The best bit was the interactive content, a sound clip of one of their songs, ok so it’s not my music but hopefully BLYK realises that this is what we want! I also received a second MMS from a band called the Metros with yes you guessed it a short mp3 clip. When you press listen with my phone (k550i), I had the option to set it as my ringtone now that is potentially a cool feature, BLYK sends me a short clip and within a matter a seconds it can be my ringtone!

Tuesday 18th March 2008

Can you guess what I am going to say, yup another mp3 clip of a new single from that band everyone (well BLYK anyway) have heard of Operator Please, however there was a competition as well to win one of their signed records. I entered sadly I did not receive a reply back so I am presuming I did not win!
I received a SMS from T3 tech news asking what I would want to add to my bed, a) iPod dock b) Hi Def projector and C) mattress heating. I replied with B) of course, no reply came back to me though!

Finally I got a MMS from T3, telling BLYK customers are being offered a special gift of either free headphones, HDMI cables (WOOP bet they are fun) or 3 issues of T3 for 1p. It asked if I was interested and points me to a website…. NO NO NO is what I am thinking, there should be a mobile site which I can access for free so I can see what headphones I could get. My view is there are trying to sell me something then make it easy not hard by making me go on to a computer. So I never did subscribe, oh well!
No brand messages until the 22nd of March

Saturday 22nd March 2008

A MMS from BLYK telling me I can now top up in the post office! Cool, handy to know if I ever needed it, as yet I have had the sim for nearly 6 months and I have not topped up!
I also received a SMS from BLYK asking to reply with a joke and the funniest would win 500 texts. Again something new and cool, I replied with a rubbish joke. Will I win? I doubt it LOL!

Sunday 23nd March 2008
No Brand messages

Monday 24th March 2008

A SMS from another band called the Long Blondes, giving me a myspace link and telling me their record is out now in the shops!

Tuesday 25th March 2008

A SMS from T3 (again) asking if I wanted to read a short review on a laptop from Ferrari. Go on I thought, since it was free I replied with a Yes. They sent me a small review and a picture in the form of MMS, only one thing was missing the price but somehow I think it would be out of my price range.

Wednesday 26th March 2008

No messages!

Thursday 27th March 2008

A message from…. t3 (wow they really want me to buy their magazine). It was just another small MMS review about IPod Docks. I would go into more details however the T3 messages are starting to bore me.

Friday 28th March 2008

A SMS from BLYK concerning the joke competition, telling me the winner was online on the BLYK blog. They could have a least sent it to me by SMS! I also received a SMS from STA Travel asking if I wanted to fly to South America for GBP439! Lovely, however slightly out of price range, however they did include a free phone number which I tried and it came out of my BLYK free balance and there was also another useless web links.

No brand messages on the 29th and 30th March!

From reading my diary you can probably guess my one big issue and that is simply the number of web links being sent to me in MMS messages. None of the sites have a mobile version included within the BLYK portal, something I think BLYK is seriously missing out on. When they send me a link I want to be able to see it there and then, NOT when I get home, they would be better of me sending me an email not MMS if that was the case.

Another issue is the bombardment of messages on some days and sometimes you get nothing for a few days, if they spread them out a bit more to make a more even spread of adverts and less repetitiveness like the T3 ones. Yes the content is different however the delivery and style of the messages is EXACTLY the same every time. I want BLYK to be innovative and interesting like when they send me short mp3 clips.

A couple of operational issues I would also want to bring up, I read on the BLYK forum that they do not have the facility to PAC a number away from their network and the customer was told to wait three months! 3 Bloody Months, what an absolute joke and on the same issue we are still waiting for delivery reports and the ability to MMS other UK networks. They will be available in the ‘foreseeable future’; hmm it seems that BLYK is not competing with the big boys just yet!

Time to catch up with our Blykwatcher Ricky Chotai. He’s starting to get a little bored of Blyk when nothing is happening, but will there be light at the end of the tunnel? Read on to find out…

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Firstly apologies another quite short post, again been very busy and to be honest nothing much is going on with BLYK.

Monday 25th February 2008

No brand messages today.

Tuesday 26h February 2008

An information SMS from BLYK informing if they send me a MMS then I should reply by SMS. Something I suggested on the forums as soon as BLYK was set up. It is important and some people may be easily mistaken to reply by MMS (something I did)

Wednesday 27th February 2008

No brand messages.

Thursday 28st February 2008

An information text telling me the BLYK portal is free to browse. This is great; however one big problem there is nothing of use on it except your balance. I am not sure what I am wanting put something to keep me entertained, facebook or even MSN messenger. Something I will happily receive more brand messages in return for.
I also received a question on what I though were the coolest brands. I replied back saying BLYK (just to be a geek)! Maybe they will be give more some more free minutes for being praising of them!

Friday 29th February 2008

I got an information SMS from BLYK telling me BLYK will try to get cool brands on board. Quite clearly the exercise was they were struggling for ideas of brands so they though hey let’s text our members and see what they think. Do you know what an amazing idea, however it should not be clear to me as customer what they were doing. What I would have done if I was the CEO of BLYK was reply to all members saying Pepsi was number 1 in the list and Pizza Hut was number 2, not tell them that I was looking for new brands because I was struggling with advertisers (which in my opinion BLYK is)!

Saturday 1st of March 2008

No messages at all today!

Sunday 2nd March 2008

No Brand messages.

I am getting bored with BLYK to be honest, when it first started out I was getting a few brand messages a day and lots of user interaction. Currently there is little of that going on, if I was BLYK and had no advertisers I would be learning my customer as well as I could! I would be at least be sending profiling texts? Eg Do you like mobile phones? I would reply Yes! BLYK then tells me the latest handsets it is getting in.

Now you are reading this and thinking this kid is asking for SPAM texts? Nope when I signed up to BLYK I agreed to receive X amount of Brand messages a day, so if they sent me a few a day, I honestly don’t mind. If I have time or I believe it is relevant to me I would reply. As a student SMSing is not a chore for me, it is part of my daily life.

Whilst I am on suggestion mode I have been researching some more about ad funded networks, especially as BLYK is looking to expand into the European Market. BLYK is not the only one (now BLYK don’t worry I am not setting up a rival) but over in the US they have Mosh Mobile

Now let’s have a look the first thing a status page of the network. Well this would have been great for BLYK a few weeks ago when their network was down.

They have two plans (wow now if BLYK incorporated that more customers I am sure will join), the people who are low users can have less free stuff and those willing to have more adverts they get more. Makes sense to me! If you see their plans they offer free myspace, facebook and twitter! Well BLYK come on, catch up! It’s what us kids want.

Now if BLYK take the T-Mobile’s FLEXT approach and allocate a certain amount each month it is sure to be success, FLEXT was and still is the killer tariff to have as a student. You are not fixed which is the great thing! Now add data, voice, SMS, MMS combination and BLYK would be a HUGE success. Especially if you have different plans for different about of brand messages received.

So if you have loads of money take my ideas and beat BLYK at its own game, or BLYK if you want to hire me, you can for a small fee of course ;)!

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Monday 3rd March 2008

A SMS from Pied Piper records letting me know a new band called Koop (www.myspace.com/koopa) with a link their myspace. I actually went online had a quick listen. Not really my thing though.

Tuesday 4th March

A SMS from t3 (http://www.t3.com/) the gadget website, asking what I thought was the best budget DVD player. I replied with one of the options and I was sent a MMS review! Pretty Cool!

Wednesday 5th March

I received a SMS asking if I rated Cesc Fabregas, knowing nothing about football (odd I know) I replied yes and then I got a reply back saying I should watch the game about Wigan Athletic on Sunday on Sky Sports!

Thursday 6th March

REFILL Day! Yay! This time no 5am SMS , but a 9am SMS instead and email as well. Getting better BLYK maybe a bit later next month! Lol 9am is too early to wake up on a Thursday!
I got a MMS advert from a band called Operators Please (www.myspace.com/operatorplease), the coolest thing was they sent an mp3 Clip. Wasn’t my sort of music but a cool idea!
I must say BLYK is getting better and better in the types of ad’s it is sending.

Friday 7th March

Another SMS advert from T3, asking what I thought was the best gadget, I replied the Wii (it’s amazing J). However they sent me an MMS back telling me the winner was the IPod touch and another mini review.

Saturday 8th March

A MMS advert from m3, the mobile social network and they sent me a link to an ad online however; it said was that if I clicked continue I would be charge. A bit rubbish to be honest, I thought I would have a least got a mini preview.

Sunday 9th March

Nothing

Monday 10th March

Nothing

Tuesday 12th March

Just a reminder SMS from BLYK telling me how I can check my remaining free balance either by SMS or by browsing the BLYK portal (for free).

Wednesday 13th March

A MMS advert from Future publishing asking which console I preferred, I replied with the Wii. I received a reply offering 3 issues if the official Nintendo magazine for just £3.

Thursday 14th March

Nothing

Friday 15th March

Nothing!

Two weeks combined into one Blog, this was simply due to having loads of deadlines this week. However I have now completed them and I am on vacation for 3 weeks from university.

This is normally the part of the blog where I start ranting and raving, however this week I have nothing to say apart from the adverts are really applicable to me and they are much more interesting these days. The other thing is that BLYK is a saviour as I have nearly used up all my FLEXT allowance, so it is a easy way to ensure I do not go over my allowance and start to get billed.(not a good thing for a student :D)

The final thing is a quick update about twitter and BLYK, I now have been receiving updates (mainly from SMS text news) on my BLYK number and its working really well. I would link it to my main number (T-Mobile) but I think having Google calendar SMS updates (check them out they are really cool) and twitter and all my normal SMS conversations all on one number is just too many SMS’s on one number (LOL)!

This week’s BlykWatch from Ricky Chotai covers a lot of ground. Let’s jump right in (I’m going to comment inline):

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Monday 18th February 2008
No brand messages today, so I thought I would try something new, twitter. I saw that the blog had an item about it so I signed up with my Blyk number. I was always dubious about signed up in case I got reverse SMS billed, but as my Blyk sim has no credit I decided to give it a go. All signed up and now I am getting SMS updates from smstextnews.com (link) and some of my other site for free. Quite a cool service, shame it is not used by a lot of people here in the UK!

The Blyk forum has a service announcement stating Blyk will be undergoing routine maintenance on Tuesday, 19 February between 3am and 7am. This may temporarily interrupt SMS messaging during these hours. Blyk apologises for any inconvenience caused.

Hopefully in the morning things shall be fixed, for the whole of today SMS has been delayed or not sending.

Tuesday 19th February 2008No brand messages again today, SMS is fixed and working well. All I received are twitter updates from smstextnews.

I’m pleased Twitter’s working well for you, Ricky

Wednesday 20th February 2008
Nothing received at all today, all services are working normally. However I saw some Blyk reps on campus today, getting people to sign up. They however did not approach me (maybe I am on their most wanted list) or they did not see me as a potential Blyk user. Oh well!

Or perhaps they already knew you were a customer! For all those naysayers who regularly tell me that Blyk is going nowhere (or similar), don’t forget that, for the most part, we in the industry generally hear and see nothing about Blyk as we’re not the target audience. It’s good to hear that the street teams — or campus teams — are out and about signing up new students.

Thursday 21st February 2008
Blyk sent me a message telling me it loves my replies and telling me how I can reply to brand messages. Having A Blyk sim for nearly 4 to 5 months and that I reply to all the messages I can, I felt this was a pointless sms.

Aye. One man’s pointless is another man’s useful. I’d like to see Blyk humanise some of their communications as it’s clear from Ricky’s experience that he feels he is interacting with a brand. I think it’s always much better to interact with a human representative of a brand. So, for example, it’d be fun to see how Ricky and the Blyk audience would react to receiving updates from someone around their age (e.g. ‘Hi, I’m Stephanie, 25 from London and Blyk’s head of customer liaison. We love getting your replies so if you’ve any questions on using Blyk, just let me know.’) I think it’s all too easy in today’s cynical marketing world for customers to get disenfranchised quickly.

Friday 22nd February 2008
Received a message asking if I wanted a clip of Will Farrell’s trailer. I of course replied with a yes. I received a MMS with the clip great stuff, at the end of the message there was a look to see the whole trailer. It had the lovely ^ which meant I could see it for free. However after clicking on the link it tells me I need to top up. Rubbish, Blyk should not use ^ symbol if they want me to pay, and honestly who would pay to watch a trailer I am sure I can go on-line and watch for it free on youtube!

Ah this is a key issue that I think Blyk will need to act on at some point. Free should mean free. I wonder how many opened the MMS but didn’t bother clicking through? If it’s a cost issue on the advertiser’s side, the media buyer needs their head looked at. They should fund the campaign to ensure that every customer can view the trailer free of charge. Silly.

Saturday 23rd February 2008
No messages at all today!

Sunday 24th February 2008
Blyk sent me a message informing it values my responses but makes it clear that responses are free only when I see the ^ symbol. Hmm well it wasn’t free on the trailer I received a few days ago, oh well.

That’s all from me for another week, apologies if it was quite a brief blog this week, just the bare facts not had much free time to play around and test the service.

This is due to uni work and trying to save our university radio station from collapsing (I am the treasurer). So if anyone is reading this who is rich and wants to sponsor a student radio station in Manchester in the UK. Drop Ewan an email, oh and Blyk I still await your response

Ricky

- - -

Thanks for that Ricky, interesting, interesting.

Ricky Chotai’s back with another BlykWatch column charting his experience of UK ad-funded MVNO, Blyk. This week, amongst other things, Ricky points out that Blyk’s ‘free texts and calls’ model is missing what many youngsters are now demanding: data.

- - -

Monday 11th February 2008
A brand message from Blyk Music today, letting me know a new single by the Long Blonds was being played for the first time on radio one. A good SMS, however I have no idea who they are, and honestly I do not care. However had it been a band/ artist I liked it would have been a really useful SMS.

Tuesday 12th February 2008
No brand messages today, oh well. However I would like to talk about the arrival of the magic E (The what?) Well it’s the first time I have seen the symbol, (it’s a new phone) so I am sure it indicates that I can use the faster internet with EDGE. I thought, ‘that’s great I have never had an EDGE phone before now and never tried the speed.’

However as a Blyk user, I can only browse the Blyk portal at no charge — and it’s really boring — all it tells me how many minutes and texts I have left. Blyk: Please please give me some free data, so I can go on mobile messenger and check my Facebook. I am not asking for loads just a bit of data to do these things. I know Orange Blyk’s partner in the UK has rubbish rates for data but Blyk, come on sort it out, you are missing out on what your target audience want.

Wednesday 13th February 2008
BLYK launches in the Netherlands — that’s what I learnt from the forum today. Thinking about it it’s great news especially if I could use my free balance on other BLYK networks, a bit like Three-like-home. However no plans were mentioned about this as yet. I hope they do, imagine what the other networks would do???

I received a brand message from swatch, telling me I could win a trip to Paris for me and my loved one ( I don’t have one BLYK, I ticked that box saying that I am single). I could enter via the web or by calling into the store in London, great if you live in London I don’t so not very good for me and I couldn’t be bothered going on the site. One interesting points is that it said over 18’s only now did BLYK send it to all its members or only the over 18’s, I wonder???

Another brand message from HEAT magazine, I deleted that one very quickly.

I also received a personal text from Lucy from member care. Last night I tried to update my email (I have just changed email address) and guess what? There was no option anywhere on the site to change it! So I had to email member care, and I got a nice SMS back from Lucy telling me she had changed it. Nice personal touch however a bog standard email reply would have done! I replied back saying thank you, but I suspect I don’t think it actually got back to my friend Lucy.

Thursday 14th February 2008
Valentine’s Day and I got another MMS from Swatch asking me if ‘my moves were hot’? I replied (for free of course) and I got a reply saying they weren’t. Heh. However their advice was to buy a loved one a swatch. Firstly I am bloody single, I filled in BLYKs profiling questions, and the second is a Swatch? Are they being serious I have not topped my BLYK phone up and they want me to buy a swatch. Wonders will never cease….

Another brand message from The Long Blonds, this time telling me locations of their gigs and where I can buy tickets. Another great message had it been about someone I liked, I still have not listened to any of The Long Blonds, maybe I should!!

Finally 2 missed calls from a withheld number, mystery lover perhaps? I have no idea who it was as I missed them. However it could be one of the chief’s of BLYK? Who knows??? BLYK do of course!! J

Friday 15th February 2008
I got 2 messages today, one telling I can reply to certain brand messages for free. Well Duuh, if they bothered to look on the system they would see that I have been doing that. Sometimes I think BLYK know so much about me, so why not send relevant messages, one of the ways BLYK was sold was that BLYK learns and interacts with you…. Well not with me, or maybe it just takes a long time to learn?? Ha Ha

Another Heat scoop, however asking me a question however I was in the pub so I could not be bothered to reply.

The other important thing is that as I am writing this at about 2am Saturday Morning I cannot send any texts. Looks like BLYK’s SMS server is playing up. Again.

Saturday 16th February 2008
Messages are not sending all of today, sometimes they say sent but don’t deliver other times there are delays on the texts. However I have no idea which, so I have been using my main phone to send ALL my texts. Posted on the forum and the engineers are aware of the problem. Why do they not email every member or SMS us??? I am slowly getting used to these problems now but it just means I cannot rely on my messages being sent!

Brand message from STA travel asking if I wanted to go trekking to Thailand, sadly I did not take them up on their offer for GBP 135. However if you willing to pay for me just get in contact with Ewan!

Sunday 17th February 2008
Sunday the day of rest, for most of us, not if you are BLYK engineer fixing their SMS server which has been intermittent all day.

Some messages are still not being sent and you have to resend it. Delivery reports are still not operational so you never really know. I have just sent another test and they are now delivering with a small time delay.

BLYK also has a new SMS tag for outgoing texts, it reads ‘Discover Cooling Crystals with Colgate Max Fresh’ now the previous ones advertising BLYK were not so bad but this new one does not make much sense. Imagine texting your friend about what time you are meeting and finding that tagged on the end!

That’s another week of me using a BLYK. The only thing I wish to add is that if BLYK are trying to contact me (I am convinced they are watching me), email Ewan who can gladly forward any emails to me. The only question is what do they want from me????

- - -

Just a little love, Ricky

Another interesting week on the BlykWatch. Data could very well be a key offering for many of Blyk’s target audience…

The first BlykWatch diary posted last week has been very well received, judging by the phenomenal response from a wide array of readers. I agree with reader, Tom, who emailed in saying that it’s excellent to ‘get an insider look into the service’. Since you can’t easily join Blyk (most analysts, investors and indeed, anyone with a passing interest in MVNO activities, is generally well outside the Blyk target age), it’s actually quite a challenge to experience the service.

Right then, here’s Ricky’s latest entry.

- - -
Tuesday 5th February 2008
No brand messages today, however I did have a missed call from a withheld number (which is strange as very few people have my Blyk number). I suspect it was Blyk contacting me in regards to the issue of signal dropping. Whilst I was browsing the support forums, I saw another member post about similar signal problems to me. I sent another email to member care pointing them to the post. I await their response in anticipation.

Wednesday 6th February 2008
Firstly today I received another Heat MMS about Lilly Allan, this was very quickly deleted. I received that about 12:15 in the afternoon. I also received two emails from member care from ‘Gareth’, the first telling me at 12:25 that he was passing it along to their technical team but in his opinion it was down to orange signal. This annoyed me slightly as I stated in my original email that I had checked signal in the same location with a spare Orange prepay sim and I got full signal. I then received another email at 14:15 asking for further details requested by the technical team. They asked me to specify:

- Dates of when signal dropped
- Times of when signal dropped
- Locations where signal dropped?

Exhaustive.

I also received two phone calls from a withheld number and one answer phone message during the day. Yes you guessed it was Blyk! To be more precise my friend ‘Gareth’. I missed both his calls as I was in university; however his voicemail was simply repeating his last email. Sadly I am in university all day, and can’t really use my phone. So I have emailed customer care saying I do not have the detailed information they want but will keep a look out if it happens again.

As part of this mini blog I have been reading (and contributing) a lot to the Blyk forums, where I read about many members having issues with porting their numbers, SMS not being sent and even issues with customer care not being helpful. The thing I wonder is whether my issues are getting extra attention since I am publicly writing BlykWatch. So far I have received excellent customer care, yet on the forum ‘Joe Blogs’ does not necessarily seem to receive the same level of service.

This evening I was struggling to SMS to my friend on Vodafone UK. I had to resend it four times before it went through. I posted the problem up on the forum. Hopefully I will receive an email from customer care tomorrow about signal issues!

Thursday 7th February 2008
The worst day in Blyk’s history to date, today the free credit system ‘broke’. This meant for the early part of the day I could not make calls and I simply heard the message that I needed to top up. This also meant that whenever I tried to SMS I got an auto message back saying I needed to top up. The Blyk GPRS Portal is also down.

The situation in the afternoon and evening was that SMS were saying sent however I have since found out that they were not being received. I was quite annoyed as Blyk in no way made contact by email, sms or even on their home page about the problems. The call situation was fixed earlier tonight. I logged into the forum and found some big issues associated with the current problems.

I found out that people who had credit on their sim, had found out that their credit had been used up instead of their free messages and minutes. The Blyk helpline is still overwhelmed, and the forums are full of posts asking about the problems. So basically a lot of customers do not know what is going on and in regards to SMS are presuming that they are being sent. When they are not! Not good.

Currently SMS is still broken hopefully the sort this issue out ASAP.

In regards to the signal issues I mentioned about yesterday they emailed me back and asked for further details if it happens again.

Friday 8th February 2008

Well Blyk sms servers were down for about 24 hours, if Blyk was my main network would I think about switching… the answer is very simply yes. I could not risk having my main network that could go down at anytime. As Ewan said in his article the target audience of Blyk are entirely 100% dial tone intolerant, in the 7 years I have owned a mobile I have never experienced such massive issues.

However Blyk did send a sms to all affecting member, actually something I suggested on their support forum last night (did they read it or were they going do it anyway? Who knows?) I said it a few days ago and I will say it again: I have this feeling the ‘Big Chiefs’ are watching my account and my posts on the forum. I may be paranoid but Blyk appeared to make no public effort to tell customers what the problems were yet when Ewan emailed them he received the following reply.

From Jonathan, Sales Director at Blyk:

We recently had an incident that impacted some of our members and the issue was caused as a result of an NSN issue to which they have made the below statement:

“Blyk and Nokia Siemens Networks have seamlessly worked in good collaboration and there have been several upgrades and expansions to the network causing no trouble whatsoever to Blyk members. This time, an unfortunate human factor came into the picture and a procedure we’ve gone trough several times, failed - causing this incident. We regret all of the trouble for the Blyk members. Now the failure has been corrected and the Blyk service works again as it should.”

Because it was an isolated incident we’re communicating this to the affected members by sms and are posting an update on our forum.

Well I can tell you this now there has been nothing on the forum! Hmm…

There is just one other thing I want to mention tonight, If I was in Blyk’s current situation, what would I do? Well the whole network works on people wanting free stuff, I would give them some free sms and minutes to compensate for the problems. Why? I hear you ask, they have already apologised — well quite simply, I am a poor student, a few extra minutes and texts would make me think Blyk actually cares about its members and are willing to go above and beyond what is expected.

One last point no brand messages over the last 2 days.

Saturday 9th February 2008
I received two messages from Blyk today one from STA [STA Travel] and another from some called ‘Beat Stevie’. The STA was a simple a SMS asking if I was sick of deadlines and essays and telling me that I can leave it all behind! The funny thing was I was doing a big project for university (I know you are thinking yeah right!) however it was very true! All STA supplied was their telephone number, having only come back from Berlin a few weeks ago I did not respond to the SMS!

The next was from someone called Beat Stevie, invited me to watch their latest clip. So of course I replied and I received a MMS, it was a video of a coffin being burnt with absinthe. This was very odd and a link to a YouTube mini site. I had a quick look and I really did not want to spend a long time looking to be honest. They seemed to film things and put them on the tube also they seemed to be on Channel 4 as well. In my honest opinion I have never heard of them before, and I found the advert very distasteful, I felt that there should have been a warning before the sent the MMS. It surprised me that Blyk wants to associate itself with this sort of content.

Sunday 10th February 2008
No brand messages today. I thought I would talk about the Blyk support forum as there is nothing else to report. The forum is open to all members and is moderated by the customer care team. I check it daily and there are two major issues that come up all the time.

Firstly people have trouble setting their phone up; I see post, after post, after post. I think Blyk needs to send more help with its SIM packs. For someone who has a keen interest in phones I have no trouble, however it seems the average Blyk user isn’t quite capable of understanding how to setup their handset. I think Blyk should compile a list of known problems and remedies and send it in an email or in the post to all new members. The other issue is that some phones simply do not work with Blyk, the most obvious example are windows mobile devices even though they are MMS compatible. I asked on the support forums why do Blyk produce a list of known phones that do not work instead of telling users that ‘all you need is an MMS phone’. The answer I was told was that they could not do that. WHY? Hopefully they Blyk chiefs are reading this blog: Surely if you have a list of compatible devices, it will mean people will not order a SIM if they don’t have a phone that works, and this will mean less hassle for the customer care team? And I will not have to read about in the forum on every other post!!

Number porting is a big problem. 5 days OFCOM says it should take! Well not if you are a Blyk member, more like three months. There are still people on the forum if have not had this sorted out. On behalf of these people, Blyk sort it out ASAP please.

To summarise, well… what a week for Blyk! But this clearly shows some big issues in the service Blyk provides and has identified some key problems.

If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact Ewan who will forward them onto me. I will try my best to get the answer.

That’s all from me this week!

- - -

Thanks Ricky!

Setting aside the ball dropping by Nokia Siemens Networks last week, it is really interesting to read how Blyk are responding to their customers. Although there’s quite possibly a focus on Ricky since he’s BlykWatching for SMS Text News, I’m very encouraged by the apparent prompt response of the customer care team. It’s only through tracking down annoying signal glitches and forwarding to the network teams for resolution that some bugs can be ironed out. It’s encouraging to hear that customer services are apparently active on the forums too. Listening and responding is critical for this audience.

I’ve some absolutely stonking data that I got with Blyk’s permission highlighting just how effective their offering is — I’ll post on this shortly.

Ricky Chotai, our BlykWatch columnist, wasn’t due to report in until next week’s scheduled update — however we interrupt today’s regularly featured content to bring you this BlykWatch missive.

Ricky reports that Blyk appears to have suffered some manner of service interruption. There’s nothing about the issue on the Blyk blog or the Blyk press release section so I’ve been unable to verify this.

Ricky writes with his experience…

- - -

Today Blyk’s free balance enquiry service ‘broke’.

The balance service is useful if you had free minutes you could not ring and had to listen to a recorded message telling you to top up. Voice calls seem to have been fixed now though. SMS same situation and still broken, messages were saying sent but never reached their destination (this is still the case). Earlier Blyk was auto replying saying you had run out of free text messages when you had not. The Blyk GPRS portal is still down. Big Big problems.

It was worse for those who had topped up with credit, Blyk reportedly used their credit up when calls were made to the balance enquiry service!

Blyk customer support is really overwhelmed massive queues and you guessed it — you’re using more of your free balance or top up when you call because of the massive waiting time.

So even more unhappy people. The Blyk forum is full of posts asking what is happening…

All Blyk appear to be telling customers (via the forum and on the phone) is that the matter is in the technical department’s hands.

This will be one big mess to sort out!

They have no public announcement on its homepage and made no effort to contact customers by text or email. So basically a lot of customers do not know what is going on and in regards to SMS are presuming that they are being sent. When they are not. Not good.

- - -

Well, on the basis that this is a widespread issue, this will be an interesting scenario for Blyk to deal with. Massive technical failure (or so it appears) does happen.. it’s how you handle it that matters. The critical problem is perception.

Ricky still had service — from his T-Mobile handset, his primary handset. Blyk will need to act fast to ally the fears of their customers — as I’m sure the early Blyk research will have established, this target audience — the 18-25s — are entirely 100% dialtone intolerant. That is, they have never ever picked up a normal working landline phone and found no dialtone. So if it ‘ain’t working’, it will take miliseconds for the majority to mentally switch to what they’ll perceive to be a ‘real’ operator.

Blyk can fix it though. Good communication and a few smart initiatives should work. I’ve emailed their PR for a viewpoint.

UPDATE: 7am San Francisco — I just received this update from Jonathan, Sales Director at Blyk:

We recently had an incident that impacted some of our members and the issue was caused as a result of an NSN issue to which they have made the below statement:

“Blyk and Nokia Siemens Networks have seamlessly worked in good collaboration and there have been several upgrades and expansions to the network causing no trouble whatsoever to Blyk members. This time, an unfortunate human factor came into the picture and a procedure we´ve gone trough several times, failed - causing this incident. We regret all of the trouble for the Blyk members. Now the failure has been corrected and the Blyk service works again as it should.”

Because it was an isolated incident we’re communicating this to the affected members by sms and are posting an update on our forum.

Thanks for the update Jonathan!

I’ve been following Blyk, the UK (and soon to be international) advertising-based MVNO for a long time — ever since it was a glint in the milkman’s eye — or, more precisely, ever since news of it publicly broke a long time ago.

I did a count last week — I routinely get about 10 questions or calls about Blyk a week from various parties wanting to know more, particularly information starved analysts wanting to see how things are getting on in reality with Blyk.

(I still get people asking me about Lethal Weapon when I mention ‘Blyk’ (background here). I still have a pretty good feeling about them. I reckon they’re in the right place.)

My biggest issue with Blyk is the entirely arbitrary 217 texts and 43 minutes a month they give each customer. I know it’s ‘based’ on research. Just, well, I always like to look at the end-game — and I think they’d have been far better suited making it free. Entirely free. Or 1,000 minutes and 1,000 texts per month. I don’t like the temporary nature of it… I think it paints the wrong impression in the mind of the consumer: Like they’re only ‘worth’ 43 minutes each month to Blyk. That being said from what I can see, I think the team are doing well.

So what’s BlykWatch all about? Well, Ricky Chotai is 19, based in Manchester and I’ve engaged him to write a daily account of how he uses Blyk — and, crucially, to document how Blyk interacts with him. Ricky became a Blyk member right away when the service became available in November 2007. His main number is a T-Mobile UK contract so Blyk, running on an unlocked Sony Ericsson W610i, is Ricky’s second phone.

We’re going to give BlykWatch a go and see how we get on — it’ll main comprise of Ricky’s weekly account of his Blyk interactions. However if you’ve got questions, send me a note and I’ll put them to Ricky to answer in his next report.

(Ricky Chotai is not to be confused with SMS Text News daily contributor, Ricky Cadden.)

On with the BlykWatch:

- - -

Thursday 31st January 2008
Sent a few texts with BLYK this morning, and have discovered that text tags (a small ad added to outgoing SMS messages) are no longer attached to all SMS. Logged into the BLYK forum and read that this is due members on the forum not happy with the tags and now they will only be attached to a certain number of outgoing SMS not every message. It is great to hear that BLYK is listing to its members.

I think I may have found a problem with BLYK, sometimes I lose all signal all together and then it comes back randomly. It is a very strange issue and I will pop over to the BLYK forum and see if they have any answers. I know it’s not my phone as I put an Orange sim and the signal is full. BLYK is MVNO of Orange so signal wise they should be the same!

Finally I received no brand messages today.

Friday 1st February 2008
I woke up to the sound of my phone receiving a message at 12pm, and lo and behold it was from BLYK. It was an mms of the Sony Ericsson k850i telling me I could buy it from BLYK shop unlocked for GBP279! I had no reply from my post on the forum about signal issues so I sent member care an email.

I then traveled on a virgin train from Manchester to my home town of Lancaster, for those of you who use the trains in the UK will know that Orange has an exclusive deal for signal boost on these trains. As a result I could happily chat and SMS all the way, whilst my T-Mobile phone was out of signal!

I also received a further two brand messages; one was a HEAT Scoop about Peter Andre and Jordon, which I promptly deleted and the other was from dominos pizza giving me a £5 discount code if I spent over £15. Sadly the dominoes in Lancaster do not deliver to my house so that was not happening and the voucher code runs out on Sunday. Oh well!

Saturday 2nd February 2008
One brand message received today from L’Oreal, I also had the option to reply which I did and I was sent a mms which contained a video. In my opinion it was not very interesting. That’s all for today except I am running out of minutes, however my refill is on Monday so all is ok.

Sunday 3rd February 2008
One brand message (however it was a sms not mms) today asking if I had used an online dating site, to which I replied no and I got another sms back, pointing me to www.quickflirt.com and a unique promo code. I will however not be using the code so if you want it drop me an email (in confidence of course haha).

Just a couple of quick points I received an email back from member care they told me that they had no information or known issues about signal, but they would keep a watch out. The other point today: Whilst trying to replying to the brand message, I had to send the text a few times — as the BLYK SMS server was playing up again. I feel BLYK need to move quickly getting this issue resolved as the same thing was happening a few weekends ago, and it is not showing them in a good professional light.

Refill day tomorrow!

Monday 4th February 2008
Refill day BLYK sent me a SMS at 5am telling me and my account had been refilled. 5am thank god I had my phone on silent (this was because it’s my birthday so my mates would sms me at stupid hours). No happy birthday message or anything extra from BLYK oh well!

They also set me an email at 5am telling me the same thing however it was marked as very important! Anyway I think I should not complain as it is all for free!

- - -

Fascinating, thank you Mr Chotai. It makes for interesting reading, does it not? What are they doing sending account refill messages to students at FIVE am in the morning?

It’s great to see how Ricky’s actually interacting with the messages. I remember a lot of sneers from the analysts and journalists in the room at the Blyk launch event last year who reckoned no one would bother responding. Nonsense. It’s passive entertainment. Why else would Ricky respond to a L’Oreal ad? Fair enough, he didn’t think the video was that interesting — but L’Oreal got to him through Blyk. Quite telling, too, about the Dominos 5-pound discount voucher… had he been located nearer a Dominos, would he have used the voucher? Sounds like he might have.

Not good news about the Blyk text gateway appearing to have problems. I remember they were extremely careful to point out that their technology was all under their express control. Looks like they’re still working out the kinks. Critical to fix, that.

Thanks Ricky — look forward to more from you soon.