August 25, 2009
An iPhone App for Free Texting
A recently released app that offers free text messages on the iPhone is welcome news to parents of teenagers upset over the cellphone bills of their hypertexting children. But can it be a sustainable business? Bits takes a closer look.
TextPlus is a free iPhone application that offers unlimited free text messaging from iPhones or iPod Touches and includes group text messaging.
TextPlus pays the text messaging bill to AT&T in exchange for showing ads to its users.
Since textPlus came out in June, its 800,000 monthly users have traded 80 million text messages, with the flow currently about 1.6 million a day. All those texts get expensive for Gogii, which pays AT&T for them to be sent. Scott Lahman, Gogii’s chief executive, concedes that the revenue from ads so far does not come close to the amount of money Gogii pays AT&T.
“Free texting does not work and would not work,” Mr. Lahman said. “We think of it more as sponsored texting. And I don’t think our texting would be monetizable if not for the rich app” provided by the iPhone, he said.
Read full article
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2009/08/024326.htm
| Tweet |
