China's New Year is big business for SMS

More Chinese are sending New Year greetings via text messages. But for many people, the novelty has worn off. People complain that the practice is too impersonal and too intrusive.. The WSJ reports.

"Known in the local media as "the thumb economy," text messaging brought in more than $5 billion for China Mobile and China Unicom, China's two wireless carriers, in 2006.

"In the first week of this year's New Year celebration, which started on Feb. 18 and ends Sunday, Chinese sent 15.2 billion text messages, or about 33 messages per cellphone account.

... In China, text messaging is big business, not just for New Year's greetings. Major Chinese Web sites, such as sina.com and tom.com, pay writers a few dollars for jokes, greetings and little love letters.

... Several companies help people send text greetings en masse. Wangxin365.com sells software that lets users send a message to as many as 10,000 recipients simultaneously for $100. Aucosms.com delivered about 300,000 messages for its customers during the Chinese New Year and took in about $2,500 in revenue.

Some of the most popular New Year text greetings this year came out of a contest organized by some of the largest media outlets, Web sites and cellphone operators in Beijing. The contest attracted more than 680,000 participants nationwide. The best 10 messages were publicized in national media."

Below, one of the top 10 winners of a New Year's text message contest in Beijing.

I want to give you the sunshine of the Everest, the breeze from all corners of the world, the blessing from the king of mountains and the fortune of Bill Gates. Wish you a happy Spring Festival.

emily | 7:41 AM | Random Stats |
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