OpenMarket – November 4, 2014
The ubiquity of SMS has led to many innovative and entertaining use cases. I thought it would be interesting to look at five of these examples which may spur your own creative juices.
1. SMS discovers the Internet
Developers are using SMS text messages to provide Internet access to places around the world that don’t have wifi or 4G mobile broadband connections. The Cosmos browser uses text messages to discover web content and display it to users in a simplified manner. Surfing the Internet via text messaging could actually bring Internet access to parts of the world faster than any other technology available today.
2. Your cow is texting you Farmer Brown
Hot cows (literally) are being identified by Farmers. Cows can text farmers in German, French, Italian, English or Spanish to inform their farmer that they are in heat. Increased milk production is stressing cows and causing a drop in their reproductive activity which why farmers need to know when to bring in the bull. Moooooving on.
3. SMS billing
Merchants create invoices and request payments via SMS. SMS notifications are being sent with a link to your Bitcoin wallet where the recipient is prompted to pay in their desired currency. With the high read rates of SMS, one would expect that faster, more frictionless payments may occur.
4. SMS postage stamps
Back to Swiss ingenuity. 100,000 letters were franked using SMS postage stamps. This pilot program was so successful that mobile franking with the SMS postage stamp has been included in Switzerland’s permanent product set. No mention if any of those SMS messages were done by cows.
5. I am Groot
This is a simple, automated two-way SMS program that a Twilio developer created. If you haven’t seen the movie: Guardians of the Galaxy yet, you might not appreciate the awesomeness of this use case which has sent over 60,000 messages already. Not bad for engaging the attention of consumers. Hope this gets you thinking more creatively about how you could possibly use SMS for your business. If you still need help brainstorming ideas, contact us.