TextMark New Revenue Stream Off The Mark

I agree, rarely are things posted on blogs that urgent that you need to get them texted to your mobile phone. In today's age we are always just around the corner from a computer with internet access, so if you must, they are there, other than that, what is wrong with waiting till you get home a couple hours later?

Instead of a monthly subscription, a pay per text model might be more attractive to people. You select what kind of text messages you want, kind of like how you can flag what news stories you want to be notified of with Google News and get a text message when your keywords are triggered.

There are certainly some instances where SMS alerts are very useful... just general blogs where the blogger posts whatever BS just to have a post for the day -- no.

I'm using SMS alerts for Adwords. Its very helpful and important for me to know if an ad stops running. Its free, but assuming it was $9.99 a month, knowing this even an hour earlier than I would otherwise from checking on the web is a tiny price to pay.

Summery -- timeless and relevance are absolutely critical. Lets face it, most blogs are full of to much junk to be that important.

Interesting concept - but I wouldn't pay $5 a month just to get an SMS about important news when I can just see it by checking my RSS reader.

I figure it can't hurt to try. I tried to hit their site earlier today when I read it on TechCrunch, but got errors.

Think I'll try again.

Did you mean Scoop or scope? rushing to the post button again? :-)

yes, for the average blog this is not a big revenue generator. . .but then have you used the wap plugin for displaying the post on wap phones?. . .the results are nice too. . .see it in action @ my site...

http://www.theanand.com/blog/wp-wap.php

John, I can say with 100% certainty that I wouldn't pay for that service as a reader. I'm just not that mobile, nor do I need my John Chow fix that bad ;)

It's a nifty idea, but as people have said, what is the real purpose in having txt's sent to your phone to check blogs? I have RSS, thats enough - plus why pay when you could just design a aim bot to send out messages easily to anyone in a list?

-Nick
Blogger Time Capsule - 100,000 User Goal!

its not that hard to push mail out yourself to a paying subscriber base , once you've updated your RSS file.

the pseudo logic is pretty simple:

write to rss file
select all paying subscribers
build mail alert
email them

your paying subscribers would then pick up the alerts on their blackberries or email enabled mobiles.

so in other words , there's really no need for this service.

You could, with a little work, set up a mailing list to handle SMS alerts. SMS is just a very stripped-down email delivered to a certain number at a certain domain. For instance, Verizon's texts go to #########@vtext.com. You'd probably just need to find out the domains for the other carriers and you'd be golden.

No way !! I will never use this !!!!

Of that $4.99, you only get 30% anyway... I doubt that large a majority would be willing to pay for SMS messages when they can just check their RSS for whatever they already pay for net access.

This service is about 3 years too late.

First of all, I think that the amount that a publisher gets from this is too small.

Secondly, the only blogs that can benefit from this type of services would be the ones concentrated on stock market advices (the only example that I can think of). But, as I said on my blog, I don't really know how many people are making their decisions regarding buying or selling based upon information provided by other bloggers.

I honestly don't see it as a successful program... but who knows... I may be wrong.

Nice service, but not for blogs, I definitely wouldn't pay to receive updates on my cellphone; that's what RSS feeds are for, aren't they? And if your mobile phone support email; you could also use one of the various 'RSS to Email' services on the web, no doubt cheaper ;)

great service, but i dont think their will be many subscribers

I honestly can't think of any circumstance that I personally would use this service.

The only scenario I can think of in which this would be somewhat useful would be if I were a corporate level investor that day-traded and there were a company I was invested in that offered the service, and I was on the road a lot. That's a pretty narrow niche.

However, I guess there is no down side to signing up for the service from a publisher's point of view.

Finally - I would be very surprised if there weren't already some sort of RSS > Email service out there, and how many of the target subscriber audience is not going to have a handheld device that supports email VS SMS.

I pay enough for text messages as it is. I don't think there's a blog out there important enough for me to keep up to date all the time (sorry John). As my friend said "it's ok to step away from net once in a while"

Honestly, I wouldn't pay for it, and that means I would not pay for JohnChow.com updates on my phone. Who needs this anyways? I mean, everyone will be getting an iPhone soon ;) and that means wi-fi, so they can actually go to the site, or check GoogleReader/Bloglines.

I'm fine with turning on my MacBook and firing up NewsFire, it's okay if I don't get updates until 3 or 4 hours later, I can wait.

I doubt I'd pay that much regardless of the website or information. It's just not that hard to get quick updates if/when you want them or need them.

So no, I wouldn't pay for updates from JohnChow.com, but it's not a personal thing. ;)

You can offer it for free also.

Good criticism. Yep! Another intermediate technology, before all mobiles become fully internet capable, in about five years or so. After that, what's the market for a service like that?
My best guess: probably almost non-existent, unless it evolves out of SMS.

I agree. It may appeal to the freelance journalists, not the average bloggers. Unless ofcourse one really doesn't have a life and really needs to read blog posts when he/she is away from you computer.