I have this really bad habit of taking pictures of myself with my phone. I’m not sure why, but I find uses for them all over the internet. You never know when you’ll need a good self picture. I also have a big weakness for hats. I *love* hats.

So I was in Target (yes, I go there often) and found the hats area, and started putting the hats on and making a funny face, snapping pics with my phone. There was only one other person around, and he was on the other end of the Menswear section, so I didn’t worry about it.

However, as I was snapping the pictures and picking through the hats, he somehow snuck up on me, and sauntered over as if he was looking at the hats for himself. For some reason, I immediately became self-conscious, and tried to play it off as though I wasn’t taking silly photos of myself in different hats. However, I noticed that it didn’t sem to phase him in the least bit. He stood there next to me as if every other time he’d shopped, there was some fool snapping pictures in hats.

It really made me wonder how fully-featured cellphones have changed our lives, and altered what is now ’socially acceptable.’ There was a point at which talking on the phone around others was considered extremely rude, and now people do it in movie theatres, at the dinner table, and other completely inappropriate situations. The same goes for taking pictures, apparently. People don’t seem to flinch or look startled when I take pictures of random things around me (such as rhino statues.)

Have you noticed your concept of ’socially acceptable’ changing on account of your mobile? For better or for worse?

Remember I went to that mobile internet seminar last week (write up here)? Well I have just got hold of the presentations.

So for anyone who’s interested…

Skype

Yahoo! Go

Jaiku, baby

And another, bigger Jaiku one from Jyri because I found it on Slideshare. I love his presentation’s style.

Link: Case study: Reduced mobile comms costs at St Edmundsbury Borough Council :: PublicTechnology.net :: e-Government & public sector IT news + job vacancies:

Found this article whilst trawling around the web. It’s quite lengthy, and does concentrate a lot on voice communications - however near the end of the article there’s a couple of paragraphs that talk about text.

Using SMS text messaging, teams in units such as refuse collection and landscaping now communicate with one another to divide work according to location and availability. For example, if one team of refuse collectors does not have capacity to remove all of the rubbish from a given site, they send a text message to another team requesting assistance.

As Mr Brindle says, “Many of our services have really improved as a result of greater collaboration between our mobile workers. Using SMS has not only increased efficiency but it is also a very quick and cost-effective form of communication.”

There doesn’t appear to be an application involved as such, just mobile to mobile text. Still, it’s good to see that the public sector is finally realising the power of SMS.

It’s been a rough old ride for the world of premium SMS of late. What with the numerous scandals involving TV channels, Vodafone having a couple of overcharging problems, ICSTIS adjudications and fines on the increase and public trust in the industry at an all time low, I’m wondering whether this is the end of premium SMS as we know it.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing some blog posts about the subject, with examples of how they do things in other countries, talking about how the industry can clean up it’s act, what ICSTIS plan for the future, and other related subjects. I’d welcome your feedback, whether you’re a consumer, aggregator, service provider, or just have something to say on the subject.

I’ll skip the history lesson and assume everyone knows the basics of how premium SMS works, what shortcodes are, and so on and so forth. Today’s case study is of a competition campaign for Coca Cola’s Dr Pepper brand, as I just happen to have a bottle in front of me. We’ll be comparing it to a similar competition for ITV’s popular soap Coronation Street.

The bottle gives me a chance to win ‘the ultimate Wii games room’, including a 26″ LCD TV, mini-fridge full of soft drinks, and of course the aforementioned Nintendo Wii. I can enter the competition via SMS, or just go to their website. I chose the SMS option, otherwise this would be a very short blog entry!

To enter, I just texted the unique code inside my bottle to a shortcode. That cost me my normal network rates (10-12p according to the label). This is what I got back:

Wicked. So I’m in the draw for today, and I’ve got a discount code to save some cash on some PS3 games (yes I’ve blurred the code, have to get your own!). It’s a free to user text, and Coca Cola have picked up the tab. I’ve so far spent just my normal network text rate.

Then, a few seconds later, I got another text. Although it’s from a shortcode, again it’s a free to user text:

I’ve not got a problem with being asked for my details, and don’t think this is pushy at all. My mobile number hasn’t been opted in yet, and if I don’t want to get more info I’ll just ignore it.

My point in all this? I’ve entered a competition to win about £1k worth of stuff, and it’s cost me just one text. Not one text plus 25p, or 50p, or £1.50. Just 10p inc VAT, in my case. Coca Cola haven’t got anything out of me, like permission to market to me or anything, but I’m in with a chance to win some cool stuff.

Let’s look at the other side of the coin. A quick Google through the net, and I found the terms and conditions for an ITV Coronation Street competition, where I could win a 32″ TV, a DVD recorder and a DVD box set. Ok so it’s a little bit more than what I could win with Dr Pepper, but look at how different it is:

1.4 Entry to the competition is by SMS only. Entrants are required to send a text to 63337 with the keyword QUIZ. The charge per text message will be £1 plus up to 7 messages at standard network charge. The total cost will therefore be dependent on the entrant’s network.

£1 *plus* up to seven standard texts? That’s going to be nearly £2 by the time I finish. Reckon they’ll ask me if I want to opt-in to receive marketing texts? Not according to this, they won’t:

3.2 Any personal data will only otherwise be used in accordance with ITV’s privacy policy and the Promoter’s (where different). ITV’s privacy policy can be viewed at http://www.itv.com/. ITV will only use an entrant’s personal data to send information of offers or services that may be of interest to that entrant from time to time by email, SMS or post or pass that entrant’s data to carefully selected third parties in accordance with the marketing preferences that the entrant has selected. To opt-out of receiving any marketing communications from ITV, entrants can amend their marketing preferences at any time by sending an email by going to www.itv.com/itvi/help or calling 0845 055 0011 and giving their name, email address or responding to the opt-out mechanisms in the relevant communication itself. To opt-out of receiving any further communications from third party companies, entrants should contact them directly.

So unlike Coca Cola who’ve asked me if I want my personal data used, ITV *will* use my personal data, give it out to anyone that wants it, *and* charge me nearly £2 for the privilege? What absolute rubbish. I’m sure this breaks some rules somewhere or other. Guess which providers are running this? Yep, MIG and Eckoh. Those are two names we’ve heard a lot about lately, and it ain’t been good..

Anyway, to sum up, in my opinion Coca Cola know how to treat their consumers, and ITV haven’t got the foggiest. The problem is that certain broadcasters are using their immense audience reach to try and screw as much money out of their viewers as possible - at least until the new ICSTIS Guidelines get approved and come into effect. Until them, it appears to be a free for all in the attempt to prop up falling advertising revenues by fleecing consumers.

Continuing the SMS Text News send-us-a-case-study campaign, today I am pleased to feature UK located company, Esendex. Here’s co-founder, Adam Bird with an overview:

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Esendex has always been about business sms services. We deliver SMS services as a utility that businesses use alongside telephone, fax and email to enable them to conduct their business efficiently and cost-effectively. Our focus has always been on providing reliable, performant message using national carriers.

Playing by the rules is important if you are in this for the long run and want to build a real business. To a certain extent this means a hard slog to reach critical mass. In the early days customers didn’t expect too much but increasingly businesses are looking for levels of support and security of supply consistent with their other business communication channels.

I guess we built the company in our own image. I came from an enterprise development background, Julian from the utility sector and we just thought about doing things in the best way possible. There have definately been times where we wished perhaps we a little more fast and loose, but we’re really bad blaggers and probably couldn’t have carried it off.

In a recent customer survey, 93% of respondents were very satisfied with the service they received from Esendex, with reliability being cited as the most valued aspect of our service. Must have something to do with the team of technical experts, passionate about availability and performance, who monitor and maintain our systems 24 x 365.

All this is very laudable but not particularly exciting, which was the feedback during one of our PR flirtations over the past few years. The really interesting stuff, the stuff that’s makes people understand what we do at parties, are the case studies.

In the early days this was also the education challenge, “so SMS is for kids or for spamming people, why on earth would I use it in my business?”

Both RAC Autowindscreens and NTL (Virgin Media as they are now) use our system to manage their mobile workers, sending and receiving job information. Which has meant saving money on voice calls and dispatch staff at the same time.

In NTL’s case we have developed and host a bespoke application that manages job workflow all via SMS which has recently been rolled out to a number of other departments. We’ve also developed service checkers that confirm service availability for a given postcode, locations of local exchanges and switch gear, and a whole host of other services that bring enterprise data into the moble arena.

Another service I’m particularly proud of is the Car Data Check service we run for Experian. Taking a registration number for a car via text, matching that against Experian’s vast motor and insurance database and sending a report of the vehicle’s history and likely concerns via text. Once this service was live we then added in a Parkers valuation, gave it the keyword PRICE on 80806, and a very successful consumer service was born.

The great thing about all these services is they seed ideas among the rest of our customers and the business community as a whole. My personal view is that we have still along way to go with SMS and mobile messaging in general. It will become as pervasive as telephone, email and fax but in ways we’re only just imagining.

Adam Bird
Esendex
Email: adam.bird at esendex.com
Call: +44 115 852 5758
Text: +44 7800 140716

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Adam, thanks for taking the time to write! Fascinating!

I’m seeing more and more commercials on TV lately that encourage me to text a number to receive more info. For instance, I can request information on a new car, joining the army, and now get the latest on a range of lingerie - courtesy of TXT4 and bra manufacturer Bravissimo.

Here’s something interesting though. The TV advert (pictured) featured phone and website calls to action, as well as the text number you can see in the screen grab. In terms of response, SMS came out top, with 45% of the total consumer response coming in through the shortcode. In addition, it’s helped Bravissimo measure the return on investment for their campaign.

Jo Lee, marketing director at Bravissimo, explains “Assigning a unique keyword to each advertising placement across all media channels enables us to see exactly where leads come from to help determine how successful each has been in generating response. In addition profiling respondents gives valuable insights into the types of consumers we’re successfully attracting and also allows us to better analyse the impact of individual TV and radio spot times. This is valuable information when planning future campaigns. ”

Interesting stuff. Apparently the word on the street is that mobile marketing in the retail sector is going to be the big thing for the rest of the year.

TXT4’s CEO Tim Carrigan says: “Of the 230 major brand campaigns we currently manage, from global automotive manufacturers to travel companies, 80% of them use SMS for handling brochure requests. Companies see a dramatic uplift in response as a result of providing consumers with a quick and easy way of responding from anywhere, at anytime. Not only does this capture consumer interest at the very point they see the advertising, but automating the process provides high quality data capture while significantly reducing handling costs.”

80% is a fantastic figure, so congrats to Tim and everyone at TXT4. Any offers of scantily clad women in underwear always welcome..

Link: webitpr | Get Instant Cover Before Travelling

Congratulations to Clickatell (sponsors of this site), who’ve hooked up with insurance giant Metropolitan Life to pull off a world first - offering insurance by mobile phone in South Africa.

Here’s the deal. Insurance, as we all know, is usually a hassle. You’ve got to fill out a ream of paperwork, sign in triplicate in ten different places, and then wait for a few days for all the bumph and policy documents to turn up. Not good, especially if you’re not exactly comfortable with locking yourself into a deal, or don’t have a bank account that will allow regular monthly payments to be sucked out to pay for said insurance.

Step forward then Cover2go. For around R10 (approx €1), handset owners can take out life cover of R60,000 (approx €6,300) for six days at a time, just by texting a premium SMS shortcode. The cost is automatically deducted from their mobile prepay balance (or charged to their monthly account), and they get a confirmation text back with the policy number. As soon as six days is up, Cover2go sends them a text reminding them the policy is about to lapse, and offers the chance to renew it.

What’s the market for a six day life policy, you may ask? CEO of Cover2go Derek Pead explains:

“Every day, a large majority of South Africans have to board minibus taxis, many of which are notoriously unsafe. For people travelling over the most dangerous periods such as the Easter weekend, the risk to the wellbeing of their families is very real – 276 people died this past Easter holiday. Unfortunately, the common perception is that life assurance is a luxury that’s unaffordable and complicated to obtain. With Cover2go, people can get basic cover instantly, at very affordable prices, when they need it most”

So there you go. What a great use of mobile technology - it’s simple to use, doesn’t rely on the latest flashy phone with all singing all dancing software and a 3G connection, and it’s filling a gap in the market.

Will be interesting to see how well this service performs in the coming months. Maybe they could offer a minicab insurance service for revellers in London’s Leicester Square? Provides cover in case of driver getting lost, overcharging, falling through hole in floor, or being stopped by police as the driver got his driving licence from a cornflake packet.

I got this opinion piece release in from Elena at Incentivated. It’s actually rather refreshing to read the perspective — albeit in press release form — of one of the country’s mobile marketing agencies. I think this sort of public commentary is to be encouraged.

Have a read:

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As last week’s Panorama exposes another scandal involving premium rate phone and text competitions, is the public’s confidence in this medium at an all time low? The BBC alleges that “callers to premium-rate phone competitions on the GMTV breakfast show have been defrauded out of millions of pounds… Since 2003, callers had wasted a total of £45,000 a day - or £10m a year - entering the competitions.”

Robert Thurner, Commercial Director at mobile marketing agency Incentivated, believes that this example is very much the exception and not the rule when it comes to text messaging services. Most such services are not premium rate but either free or the cost of just a standard rate text message. They are run for marketing or customer service reasons not to generate revenue. Text messages are the most direct form of non-verbal communication, as well as being the most likely to be opened - 95% of texts are opened compared with 25% of emails (source:IAB). When used appropriately, text messaging can perform important tasks that no other communication medium can.

Whilst early stage industries such as mobile services often attract companies seeking to make quick profits, long term players take a responsible attitude to growing the sector through self regulation and the development of best practice guidelines. Codes of conduct developed by the Direct Marketing Association, Institute of Sales Promotion and Mobile Marketing Association as well as the existing rulebook developed by the Advertising Standards Authority are very clear in such cases and together with the premium rate regulator ICSTIS have teeth.

Text message campaigns can offer a vital service. Incentivated’s campaign for the Mayor of London allowed the general public to receive contact details by text for the closest licensed minicab firms in an effort to reduce sexual assaults by illegal minicab drivers. British Airways delivers time sensitive travel alerts to passengers and cabin crew, again through Incentivated, allowing travellers to learn about disruptions and act upon them instead of finding out at the airport when it’s too late.

Robert Thurner, Commercial Director at Incentivated, explains: “Text messaging has become a major part of everyday life, with an average of 138 million being sent each day. This is the latest in a series of allegations concerning the use of premium-rate phone lines by TV stations. They are no doubt causing the public to become suspicious of text messaging services as well as promotions and competitions and could undermine all the positive work currently happening in the industry which should not be ignored. Legislation is in place to protect the consumer and text campaigns that allow the public to make charitable donations, find safe taxis and even land a new job prove the many benefits of mobile and text services. Offering the mobile as a medium for consumers to interact with brands and good causes that insight an immediate desire to respond and be involved is bringing traditional media to life.”

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If you’ve got a view on the marketplace, whack it over and I’ll get it up.

This is excellent — here’s an overview and some case studies about iTAGG, penned by Co-Founder, Steve Procter.

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Steve writes:

“Delightfully vocal” hey!! ;-)  I like that one…I think!!  As always though Ewan, a fantastic blog, frankly the only mobile industry one I read.

iTAGG is now one of the longer established 2-way sms gateway providers in the UK.  We started back in 2002 and our first service was to provide live goal alerts for the Japan worldcup. With no access to premium rated sms at the time and with people signing up by credit card, and with delivery times being, lets say ‘not guaranteed’, it was certainly an interesting time!  iTAGG was started on the back of my first internet business Easily.co.uk which became one of the leading domain name and hosting companies before we sold it to Netbenefit a few years ago.  It was the concept of searching for available domain names and letting people register them that led us to the idea of letting people register keywords on a shared shortcode.  I am not 100% sure we invented the concept but with nearly 20,000 keywords having been registered on various shortcodes and virtual numbers we’ve had over the years, I feel iTAGG has led the way in bringing low cost 2-way text services to small and medium businesses in the UK.

In 2003 we also became the first company to provide a location based service across all network operators across the whole of the UK (as opposed to a couple of trials in London and a few that still didn’t include Orange).  I have to add that we don’t count Three because until this day they don’t offer their location gateway out.  The service was for The Good Pub Guide and we are now running it for them for the fourth year running.

When the networks finally provided inbound MMS to shortcodes last spring in time for the world cup, iTAGG was again the first to upgrade it’s 60300 shortcode and offer sms and mms keywords on a shortcode to all it’s clients.  We already had a lot of experience with this having provided inbound MMS on long numbers for the likes of Live 8, so it made sense that we expanded our core services to be 2-way sms and also mms.  We’ve played around with our pricing over the years but with the huge takeup of MMS capabilities over the past 6 months we decided to stick to the £25 per year model which is seeing keywords fly off the shelves.  The bulk and premium sms sends then usually come off the back of that, but we do have a number of clients who do pure outbound delivery.

The core iTAGG system provides a web based control panel for people to setup sms sending and receiving services (voting, subscriptions, autoresponders, etc) in 10 minutes.  But the other side is our programming interfaces for developers and this is now growing faster than ever with a lot of small and large businesses realising how easy it is to integrate their own systems with ours.  One example of this is a Global 100 company that has been integrating with us to be able to send out MMS to UK users for a new web and mobile based social networking service they will be launching very soon.  Their developers had sent the first MMS through us within 24 hours of us sending them the technical documentation - they had allowed 4 weeks in their plan to get this part of the system working!

We also did some fun stuff with Ellen MacArthur a few years back when she sailed round the world, in taking image and video feeds directly from her boat webcams and showing them on a wapsite and within java apps that we built and hosted.  We also sent sms alerts every day on her current status and are proud to say that apart from the BBC 10 o’clock news (who funnily enough happened to be broadcasting as she crossed the line!!), we were the first medium to announce she had finished.  So with careful planning sms really can provide a timely and accurate method of communication.

One last case study to show how diverse and wacky small business use of sms and mms can be; we provide a service where workmen who go round digging up holes in the road all day long can send in MMS photos of the start and end of each of their jobs which get automatically fed through to the company’s own systems where they are logged.  This allows the company to provide full records to the local councils, etc to show that each job has been completed.  The workman also gets a text back detailing his next job, etc.  In terms of volumes, we are talking thousands of them every day - which makes “reviewing” our inbound traffic a lot different from when 90% of images were of an adult nature

One thing we’ve always excelled in is knowing the rules.  And wow are there a lot of rules in this game!!  But 5 years experience with a few complaints and ICSTIS raising their eyebrows at you really teaches you that you can’t knock up a gateway overnight and run it from the bedroom.  Sorry but anyone who says they’ve never had a problem has one hell of a surprise coming and some serious procedure altering moments and sleepless nights in store!!!  And just like the domain name game, it may soon be time for some culling of the dodgier players who have jumped on the band wagon thinking this is an easy ride.  Well for anyone thinking delivering millions of sms is easy then please take a read of the several hundred pages of different industry guidelines and then think again.

It is always very interesting to see new players come along in an industry, and as more and more professional companies take part (and there is no doubt, there are some amazing looking companies now!!) it helps establish mobile as a real industry.  For a few years it certainly felt like it wasn’t taken too seriously, and people wondered what the hell it was I did.  It’s also fun to look at who is who in the food chain - we are by no means at the top but even iTAGG have something like a couple of dozen other mobile/sms players using our gateway, and I daresay they have others feeding in to them.  So far from being a nasty back stabbing industry (hey I worked in domain names for 5 years!), and with great blogs like SMSTextNews pulling people together it is amazing how tightly knit and friendly it all is.  Long may it continue…

Steve Procter
iTagg

Tel: +44 207 043 3607
email: steveprocter at itagg.com
MSN: steve at itagg.com

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Steve, super. Really, really good! Thank you for taking the time to write that. It’s thoroughly interesting — I knew just a little bit of that. It’s brilliant to actually read — from the horse’s mouth — what you’ve been up to.

So — if you work in and around mobile — please do send me over a case study and/or an overview of your operations so I can publish it for all.

The first case study is in! Here’s a wicked overview of TxtLocal by founder Alastair Shortland.

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Alastair writes:

You are certainly correct… there is little time at the moment to write press releases!

I run http://www.Txtlocal.com - (Txtlocal Ltd). A website offering a very simple yet highly powerful SMS system- and we are currently doubling sales and SMS traffic each month - and have done for the past 9 months. It is an incredibly exciting time, and each day we witness massive use of our SMS services from hundreds of businesses & services across the UK.

Txlocal is a “bedroom business” which I created in October 2005 because I could see a clear gap in the market for a very simple, low cost and accessible SMS communications system that any member of the public could use. Sign up for free in seconds - import contacts into groups from Excel or grow a list of opt-in contacts using your keyword - type your message - send. Full delivery reporting, scheduling, mailmerge, long 640 character messages, fully changeable “from address”, very simple contact database. Please watch our 3 minute movie (http://www.txtlocal.com/group-text.php) showing how quickly you can set up and send your campaign!

We also launched a very simple programmers API a few months ago which has really set things alight! In minutes anyone can integrate SMS with existing online databases and SMS-enable any website or desktop application. Again, all free except for the low cost messages.

We found many of the other SMS companies were either:

1) Too technical - talking about SMPP and SOAP on the homepage is not great for chinese restaurants

2) Overly simplistic - did not feel like a serious business - could not trust that messages would actually be sent

3) Marketing agencies - no published prices, all gloss and no real info about just how simple SMS marketing is. We phoned one and were quoted £5000 +10p per message just to manage a simple SMS campaign! Daylight robbery - SMS is not complicated and there is no need to charge for anything other than the texts themselves at half that rate!!

Mass adoption is starting to happen - elements of the media (radio text-ins, TV adverts with shortcodes, reality voting shows, county council schemes etc) are raising awareness of SMS as a communications medium with simply awesome potential. How else can you so quickly, cheaply and personally reach out to a group of associates or customers?

In 1 year we have grown to over 4,000 customers - have a look at some of the feedback. http://www.txtlocal.com/text-advertising.php Very impressive I’m sure you will agree. Everyone from nightclubs to churches to darts teams to stag do’s. Anything you can imagine. We are in constant contact with hundreds of customers and have never had a single complaint, just very positive feedback

Every day we hear fantastic stories about how SMS marketing is changing businesses across the UK.

- Opticians, doctors, driving schools - texting personalised appointment reminders - much more effective and cheaper then calling customers directly or writing letters. Total outlay of less than £5 to insantly contact 100 people!
- Football teams announcing a change of fixture, match results, team updates - directly into the hands of people that have chosen to receive them. Read by 100% of receipients unlike email or letters.
- Charities co-ordinating team members and filling rotas.
- Last minute cut-price ticket availability at the theatre
- Poker tournement meet-up information
- The big match at the city centre pub - “Come down this afternoon and show this message on the door for free entry”
- Confirmation of salary payments
- the list is simply endless…

We have blue chip customers like Pizza Hut, Rileys Snooker Halls, Tetley, Lloyds TSB, AXA Insurance… and although this is fantastic, Txtlocal was created with small businesses in mind - and we are seeing scores of these come to us each day.

We are now in a position to really start shouting about Txtlocal - and introduce the concept of opt-in group SMS to the whole UK business community and local community groups.

If you have any ideas about how we can push Txtlocal further and raise awareness then please get in touch!

Cheers Ewan & thanks for your fantastic blog.

Alastair Shortland
Operations Director
Txtlocal Ltd (http://www.txtlocal.com)
07740 101098
MSN: al.shortland at btinternet.com

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Alastair, brilliant — that’s exactly what I was thinking when I wrote the post yesterday. Thank you very much for taking the time to write it.

So, if like Alastair, you work in the mobile industry — whatever business line — please send me a case study and overview of your business that I can publish here on SMS Text News. Simply email it — or check here for more guidance.

This is specifically meant for people working in the mobile services industry — aggregators, service providers, interactive agencies, developers, public relations executives, the whole shebang: Could you please write me an email and tell me about your latest client? I want to publish some case studies and link to your sites.

Here’s why. There are a lot of people reading this blog who want to buy mobile services, but are used to doing the same old searches. The ones I still regularly do. You know, premium+sms+uk or two+way+sms or shortcode+south+america. No matter what, it seems that whenever I do a search hunting for someone, I find the same two players. Netsize or Mblox. Or somebody similar.

It really does wind me up. That’s not to detract from Netsize or Mblox… it’s just, there are MORE people out there providing services. I know this, because people email me regularly looking for assistance. And I tell you, I feel a right plonker having to say, ….’errrrrrrrrrrrrrr’ to myself and find my mind blank.

Apart from feeling like a plonker, it also pisses me right off that there are companies out there doing phenomenally interesting and exciting work … and rarely do I hear about it. If someone sends me a press release, I do my best to get it up. But more often than not, quite a lot of companies don’t have time or simply don’t bother to do a press release. I’ve been there myself. I remember when we won the moderation contract for Sky, the last thing we wanted to do was arse around with a press release. We wanted to get on, get the cash in, and have a super time working with them. But then no one knew. No one knew what we were doing. Our website sat there blank for ages.

I’ll give you an example, right. Now and again Alex, one of the chaps who runs SendMyTxt.co.uk, a mobile services provider, regularly sends me mobile related news headlines and things he’s come across. He has, by the way, got lightning quick reactions when it comes to any ICSTIS notices.

Now, I don’t have a clue who his recent clients are. I’m willing to bet he and his team have done some exciting work recently for someone. Somewhere. Or I’m wililng to bet he’s got a good example of something smart they did last quarter. Or late last year. Or something.

The same goes for mobile innovators, iTAGG and the delightfully vocal Mr Steve Procter. I regularly communicate with Steve via the blog but haven’t taken the time to actually ever ask him about his latest clients. They’re regularly doing wicked stuff. I am forced to give it a cursory glance and move on with the rest of my day.

I connected today by email with Jim over at conVISUAL — although I couldn’t have guessed that they are

an international leading Full Service Provider for mobile and voice-based interactive value added services.

I know they work with some TV companies. That’s about it. I think I need to know more, and rapidly more.

I’d like to know more. I also think it would be extremely interesting to learn who’s doing what with whom. But without having to read through pages of press releases and ‘The CEO commented,’ paragraphs.

The SMS Text News blog is phenomenally well placed in Google particularly when people are searching for rather in-depth mobile terms. So I think that if I regularly published small case studies, complete with the contact details or a link to the site of the author, it could be really valuable promotion.

I reckon it would also be interesting for everyone else to read. Could become annoying. But then again, it’s better to know what’s going on rather than hide away, right?

We shall see.

Here’s my challenge. Could you email me with answers to the following questions. I will make a special effort to turn them around as soon as possible and stick them on to the site. I will also stick’em under the “Case Studies” category for anyone wanting to read them together.

If you can, pick a recent client and mail me the results? One line replies or five paragraph replies. Doesn’t matter!

The Case Study Questions
1. Your name, your company name and a two line overview of your company

2. Name of the client (or “A global consumer electrical company” if you can’t give their name publicly)

3. What problem did you solve?

4. What results did you see? How was it (the product or service) used or deployed?

5. If appropriate, give an overview of the technology you used or implemented? Any programming or development?

6. What was particularly exciting about this example? Or what were you most proud of achieving?

7. Your contact details (Product page link, web link, phone number, email)

Ok, now stick it in an email so I can tell the world!