DEMOfall: Joopz launches Group SMS
By Vivek Puri | September 27th, 2006 at 01:23 am ET
Joopz from Mobile-Sphere is an interesting product being launched at DEMOfall. Twitter has been working in this space (although product is not exactly the same), but Joopz seems to have developed a better approach to enable group SMS.
Â
Joopz lets you send and receive SMS from the Web to any mobile phone for free. You can send your message to multiple phone numbers in a group at the same time. If any member of the group replies to your message, all the members will receive that SMS. Best part is that the communication is stored and updated on Joopz site in real-time using a cool AJAX interface.
Â
Joopz also has few other nifty features to it including setting up reminders or sending text messages to recipients at a specific time – after a day, a week, a year.
Â
However, I noticed couple of issues with the Joopz setup. Message history is available only to the user who starts the discussion from web. Even if the recipient is a registered at Joopz, the messages don’t show up in his message history. Another issue is that if you send out a SMS reply in a discussion, you yourself also receive back that SMS, which logically you shouldn’t be receiving. Also there should be some way to start a group SMS discussion from mobile itself, instead of someone having to push start it from web.
Â
Personally I feel Joopz has the potential to catch up very quickly in the SMS world especially if targeted towards Asian countries where mobile is the primary device for most people.
Links:
Joopz
Mobile-Sphere
Tags: StartupSquad, Web2.0, Web_2.0, SMS, DEMOfall
on September 30th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
[…]  UK telcos are feeling left behind in the social networking buildup dominated by web startups like MySpace, Bebo, Tagworld. O2 in UK is trying to cover up and is in talks with Bebo to offer the social networking site on its mobile phones. Bebo is one of the most visited social networking sites in UK. According to research results of Hitwise in August, Bebo’s market share of visits in UK was 12.91%. In related news, Vodafone will also be launching its own social networking site next month having features similar to MySpace.  In the meantime MySpace is also gearing up for launch of MySpace on mobile. Currently only Helio users have access to MySpace on mobile but MySpace is in talks with other major carriers to launch its service on mobile.  Social networking on mobile will be much bigger than $15 billion estimates for MySpace. Mobile nets will also play out well for Telcos especially in Asian countries who have experienced the fastest mobile phone growth. From the feature perspective, a product like Joopz has much more potential instead of imitating MySpace on mobile. Joopz effectively bridges the gap between web and mobile world, which hasn’t been addressed till now. Still it is too early to say what MySpace, O2, and Vodafone have to offer. […]
on October 18th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
[…] SMS based social networking has yet to catch on in US ’cause of the extra data plans required and lack of message grouping. Looking at the Alexa graph for Dodgeball it is evident that the service hasn’t seen the kind of growth as compared to web-based social networking sites. Twitter has been working on a similar model as Dodgeball. However I like the Joopz model which needs to add a hip factor to get the ball rolling. […]
on October 26th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
[…] I think the ability to send updates from IM is the one of the best features offered by Twitter. These updates were required to the service since Twitter is not without competition. Joopz another startup in this area is also making dedicated efforts to establish itself in the market. Also Dodgeball from Google offers similar functionality. […]
on December 19th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Can anyone recommend me?
I need an free sms service for my homepage.
I am seeking one with the option to change the design(for a bit).
Thanks a million!
on December 25th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
[…] I had written about Joopz few months back when Mobile-Sphere had demo’ed its product at DEMOfall. Joopz tries to bridge the growing gap between SMS handicapped and in-SMS generation. Personally I am not a big SMS text messeger and really like the ability to SMS right from my PC instead of trying to punch the tiny keys on my mobile. Besides that Joopz can connect field workers who can update their status or provide real-time updates to their colleagues sitting in front of a PC. […]