March 6, 2003
Interest Groups and Community Texting on Upoc.com
New York based Upoc.com is the first wireless company I fell in love with, in September 2000, after reading an article in Wired about one of their community text messaging groups, «New York Celebrity Sightings», where members of the group send out an SMS to each other whenever they sight someone famous.
Over the years I have checked on them periodically to take the pulse of what this mobile community is texting about. They share hobbies, where to find better bargains, restaurants, music and movie reviews, discuss the news as it is or in a positive light, buzz about start-ups, gripe about New York, offer positive reinforcement to reformed smokers and drinkers. I delighted in some of the more whacky groups that came up such as "Worst Dates", "Fat Chick sightings", "Bush-isms" and "Boring People", and my heart went out to them following 9/11 – when members shared personal stories and offered support.
I often wrote about their "Featured Channels" in my daily French Chronicle on SMS, where members sign up for special text and audio messages about hot new movies, favorite bands, celebs.
In the next few months, the company is expected to take its messaging features to the next level by launching support for MMS. As a result of the offering, members of Upoc's "Crazy Stuff I Saw" or "NYC Celeb Sightings" groups should be able to send photos taken with camera-enabled phones to the rest of the group. As with voice messages, Upoc group members (about 500,000 users) who don't have MMS-enabled phones can go to the site to view the sent images. For more on news and trends related to camera phones, check out Picturephoning.com
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