Have you wondered what great other ideas there are to provide SMS-services? Fortumo user tells a story section has made another interview with great, yet simple idea of providing SMS-services. Meet transportinestonia.com! It’s useful, easy and quick solution for anyone who needs help with transportation service. Check it out!

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Yap, it’s summer again. The days are long and warm, and everyone just wants to get away from the city and spend a couple of weeks swimming and relaxing on a beautiful sea shore somewhere. Don’t get me wrong – we all like too get away and just chill with friends somewhere nice (actually, we just did that a couple of days ago ) – but who says that your SMS-services cant go to the beach with You?

Introducing Croatia, the newest country on Fortumo’s coverage map. It’s a beautiful country on the Mediterranean Sea, with rich culture and history, and some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. But medieval cities and 1200 amazing islands are not the only reasons why Croatia should be your next travel destination – there’s more than plenty of business opportunities for the adventurous entrepreneur out there, like:

• Croatia is one of the most tech-savvy countries in the SEE region (checkout some illustrative numbers in Branimir’s last report),
• More than 50%, or 2.5 million Croats use internet on daily bases,
• Mobile penetration, or the mobile phone per person ratio is at whopping 133% – well above average in the region,
• More than 11 million foreign tourists visits Croatia every year – and they need their SMS-services, even on vacation

Your SMS-services in Croatia will be available to users of all Croatian mobile operators, and you can choose from 2 different price-points.  All your favorite Fortumo services are there, completely free, and active in 5 minutes – it’s still as easy as creating a blog.

So enjoy your summer, and if your heading to the beach, don’t forget to bring the essentials – your swimsuit, sunblock, towel and most importantly – your Fortumo SMS-service.

You know that Premium SMS services are the best tool for making the payment process as easy as possible. No credit cards or account number is needed, not even any personal information is revealed in this way. That is why it’s only natural that a great service as Textango has been created.

Textango have been founded in 2007 and since then follow one of the most attractive models among all sites selling songs. Their main principle is 1song – 1 SMS. Just by sending 1234 to 5678 you receive a code to redeem the favorite song. It’s so easy.

A good marketing trick of theirs Read the rest of this entry »

In many countries the pre-grad school students are required to sit an exam after their last year at school. In Bulgaria, these exams took place a few weeks ago. Now, some of the young people are having a rest on the sunny beaches and others have to study a bit more. Still, for a first year, the future students are allowed to check their results with greater ease through the use of SMS. Infosystems.bg made this possible through the use of Fortumo’s services. The students only have to send TXT ID and their personal ID* to a specified short code, in order to check what they have achieved. In order to inspire you, we post here a short interview with the creators of the service – Infosystems BG: Read the rest of this entry »

We often have this type of feedback from our users: “I think you are offering a brilliant tool, but… (why there’s always a but?) I don’t know how to use you yet”. Fortumo Labs launches the “What do I do with Fortumo?” series to help you to get the M Touch into your logic loops. It is no easy task to spread the creative seeds, but it’s spring, the perfect time to get yourself inspired. Check out how our dear fellas in Malaysia have done so far to demo their originality.

Case 1 – I am running a conventional retailing business, well actually I am running a Fruit Barn. What do I do with Fortumo?

Don’t be shocked? We were shocked when we saw the keyword *“Durian” at first. Yes, fortumo helps you to spread your mobile discount coupons for this tropical delicacy as well as all other types of fruit.

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As the name says criminala is crime based free online web game where the main activities are not so legal. Every player´s main function is to be the greatest and strongest player in the game. There are so many activities that can’t be written – you just have to see and play it yourself.

“The idea of making web-based online crime game came actually from people from Netherlands. Also there was only one similar game in Estonia. Then we had enough motivation to create crime based game in Estonia. As Fortumo offers free, easy and quick services, we integrated SMS-services as well.”

How have you applied SMS-services?
There are always some people who want to be the best in low time. So we gave them the opportunity via SMS service. Users can voluntarily send an SMS message to certain number and get back some game credit what can be changed to various services and be the greatest player in the game.

Where did the idea of using SMS-services come from?
Integrating an SMS service for the site was an idea already from the beginning and as all the other game sites in Estonia were using SMS services as well.
Also it is the cheapest and fastest way to integrate paid services for websites and as we all know – almost everybody has a cellphone in Estonia.

Why did you decide to use SMS-services in your web business?
Main reason for using SMS services in our websites was and is because Fortumo offers free, easy and quick service to intergrate SMS services to any kind of service. Also SMS service is automatic so the end-users get their service instantly.

What has SMS-service additionally given you?
Actually everybody knows the answer to this question. Mainly SMS-services support us financially and of course, if there is money – there is motivation to develop the game and give players the pleasure to play the game.

Golive.ee is a free-time social network, what offers you to create your own homepage, communities, use forums, rate and comment other users and their photos, communicate with your friends and get new ones.

“I like the services that are offered by fortumo.com, because they help to start SMS-services quickly and simply for everybody. On my own site i am planning to add Fortumo´s mobile operator support for other countries, so that people from different places could use our services.”

How have you applied SMS-services?

The whole site is for free in general, but priced services enable to use the site conveniently. For example you can add advertisements, more friends into your friends list, have more photos on your profile. We use to have a competition, where you could give votes by sending messages. User just has to send a message with the right keyword and the credit will be transfered to the user´s golive.ee account what he/she can use or the user´s order will be activated. The best thing about SMS-services is that all the procedures happen instantly.

Where did the idea of using SMS-services come from?

The idea to create Golive came from the most successful social network site in Estonia. In the beginning people thought golive (old name dates-web.net) is the copy of the before reffered site, but very quickly it became for it´s content and opportunities even ideal enviroment than the competitor. Whereby there has been an infoleak that the competitor has added functionality after golive.ee.

Why did you decide to use SMS- services in your web business?

I started to use SMS-services cause everyone has a mobile phone and why not to use it in my business. Sending messages is easy and comfortableand users prefer it over bank transactions, what is rather time-consuming and unpleasant experience.

What has SMS-service additionally given you?

For the site it has given surplus value (trustworthiness, attractivity, convenience etc), for me a very postive experience with fortumo.com and additional knowleadge about sms gateway systems.

I have been reading quite a lot on mobile payment services around. In many countries,

Anyway – after I read about the latest mobile payment solution brought on the UK, I could notice how this business template has a notable interest of this own – and can give quite some inspiration to related services. So let’s have a more detailed view…

(1) Mobile payment services (MPS) aim to quickly and securely transfer cash from one place to another, all via text.

(2) This way – also affiliated merchants can also receive payments for their goods and services all via MPS.

(3) MPS services must entirely be geared towards customer satisfaction and have simplicity, convenience and ease of use all at the core of its offering. –> therefore it has to be (1) bank independent, (2) network independent, (3) handset independent, (4) age independent and (5) location independent, meaning users can use it anytime, anywhere and at any age.

Even more interesting is the use of simple commands to perform the requested transfer.

• To register -> password REGISTER YourName
• To link your credit card -> password LINK cardPassword (plus some additional instructions to register the card)
• To load the account with credit -> password GET CASH 5 cardPassword
• To check your balance -> password BALANCE
• To send money to a friend -> password BEEM FriendName 5.50

and so on, and so on..

If you have a basic experience in programming, and the necessary tools to operate with a Virtual POS, then you can create your own payment solution.

This post is just to point up a unusual trend that is becoming more and more popular in the states, especially those area that are mostly hit by the winter season. In this period of the year, many local radios’ websites provide updates on school closings via SMS. The phenomenum can be even more clear by having a look at this week’s top 50 in Google Trends.  For example, in the picture below, eleven out of the top  37, are radio call numbers and most of them are in areas with snowfall.

The top radio affiliate, WHUD, is 100.7 F.M. in Westchester New York, and offers text message alerts about school and government center closings after heavy snowfall. Although similar services are already up since years, snow alerts appeal to one of the most highly sought markets-the coveted age demographic of pre-teens and teens. Interesting