Textme: A Convenient Web-to-Mobile Sharing Service
Founded by Dayson Pais, Textme is a tool which allows the user to send links, videos, images and much more from the web to her mobile via SMS. Textme is a free service that installs on your browser and stays as an icon which can be used whenever anything needs to be sent to the mobile for future reference.Dayson Pais has spent more than half a decade incubating services and products on the web, brand identity, print, mobile and digital field and has a small but dedicated team working for TextMe. The present form of Textme has been developed after numerous iterations, reworking and troubleshooting.
How does it work?
Very easy to use, one can install and get Textme ready to work in seconds (yes). After installing for chrome, a button appears at the right top corner which can be clicked when one needs to send the link. The video details this lucidly:
Traction Generated:
“Right now Textme has been used over 4 million times by around 40,000 people across india.” informs Dayson. The team at Textme is delighted to see the way people have been using the service. “People are discovering new and unique ways to use Textme like sharing online news articles, videos from youtube, images from facebook, sending wikipedia pages, railway booking, ticket information, live stock quotes from moneycontrol, IPL scores and more.” adds Dayson. A lot of people also use Textme as a way to quickly send messages to friends and family.
Can anyone spam you?
No, definitely not. One cannot just go and keep on sending links to a mobile number. One has to be registered with Textme to send or receive an SMS. The verification for mobile is quick and seamless.
With the new regulations and the involvement of SMSs into a service, execution will definitely have a few big hurdles. Regarding these problems, Dayson says, “The biggest issue we had to address was getting the SMS delivery right and this involved testing out a dozen of options in the market and building our service around it. Further, the TRAI regulations required a re-work of most of our existing integrations and building around its limitations.”
The TextMe Share Button
TextMe has a sharing button for websites in India along the lines of Facebook share. It's available here and this is the tiny bit of script does the trick:
“We’re aggregating and tracking analytics on what content is being shared and viewed the most so that we can provide meaningful insights to webmasters who adopt our sharing service.” explains Dayson as to what value addition the button might give to company that includes the button on their site.
The firepower
The entire Textme framework is developed using open source stacks like LAMP and MongoDB. Webly, a digital+branding agency in Mumbai, which was also co-founded by Dayson provides the required finances to support TextMe. Webly provides the complete backup in terms of expertise as well.For monetization, there are multiple conventional and unconventional models in the pipeline, some of which have been validated but will be realized once TextMe acquires sufficiently large traction.
Dayson and team love to tame the wild wild web and have worked hard to create a service that is simple and clear to use. “We are hoping this will carry its own weight and as a small team, we can only plant the seeds. So far, it has worked, but we’ve a long way to go.” says Dayson about marketing TextMe.
Having got a good response for the publisher and the browser button till now, with a strong technology team at work and the motivation to build upon something that has taken a lot of effort, Dayson and team are optimistic about.
Try out the TextMe here: http://ontextme.com/
It can solve a few problems. I especially liked the fact how one can send the address (text) from the mail to your phone.