“Everyone has a Latino inside them,“ Paulina Rubio, Mexican singer

At the end of July Fortumo made a leap further than usual and expanded to Latin America.

Fortumo users are now invited to create mobile services in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. A month in the Latino market has illustrated that it is a growing economy.

This month’s Fortumo user’s service is a great example of how every citizen can take part in country’s politics and government work. It is an innovative and simple way for everyone to say what they think. And all this – with the help of Fortumo’s services! Check out the interview with Meelis Valtna, one of the founders of this great idea!

What is your website baromeeter.ee about?
Exaggeratedly and primitively said baromeeter.ee is “political rate” – for Estonians it says much (rate.ee is a very popular social network in Estonia based on ratings – M.V.). It is a laconic, emotionless website where you can assess Estonian parties’, government’s and parliament’s work.

Whom is it for?
Correct answer would be, of course, for everyone. Actually, baromeeter.ee is an effort to bring young people closer to politics through rating system which is very popular online activity for most of the young people in Estonia. In addition, giving votes and having rankings is playful and offers instant feedback. With this we also hope to give voice for those, who are in distance, doing their everyday stuff and mumble “My voice means nothing. So, it doesn’t matter.”. Well, it does matter and you can see the proof from baromeeter.ee! We also consider very important to recognise less known countryside politicians, who are not reflected that much in everyday news, but who do honest and genuine politics for their parish or town people. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time to congratulate Fortumo big time! We have reached a round number of countries again – 40! Let the Vietnamese flag’s star be the one representing this great event (like a red cherry on top of a vanilla ice-cream)! Read the rest of this entry »

Last week in an event I promised to write about real life example of a client who is using In-App Payments for Android. Read what one of our affiliate developer Nutiteq has done with In-App payments. In addition you can download Nutiteq Offline Maps from Android Market for free and see in real life how it works and how neat out In-App Payments solution is.

Getting lost in new locations is a daily dose of adventure for the traveler, whereas mobile maps are today’s solution to get back on track without extra stretch. Nutiteq, a developer of mobile mapping applications, can help Android owners’ who get into unfamiliar places with pre-dowloadable offline maps. What’s even better, users can purchase additional maps without any effort, as the system sends SMS automatically. It’s a solutions that leaves you without extra surprises in new locations and on your bill. Nutiteq wants to share their experience and give ideas to other application providers of how they can generate additional direct revenue from their popular applications and let them know about SMS-based in-application billing options. „So their applications will be better and better, instead of dying out,“ said Jaak Laineste from Nutiteq.

What is your service Offline Maps for Android about?

Offline Maps for Android is a mapping application for Android mobiles with one special feature: you can pre-download the maps to the device, so you do not need to use the data connection to download them over mobile network. Some other special features are also in the roadmap and will come with updates. Nutiteq is also planning to cover other phone platforms (e.g. Nokia and SonyEricsson phones).

Whom is it for?

This service is especially useful when you are travelling to other countries, where data roaming fees can be very expensive. Typical data roaming fee in Europe is about 5 EUR/MB, and it is not big art to create couple of megabytes data traffic when you are lost in a strange city.

Where did the idea of offering and starting a service like that come from?

It came from my own own needs: when I am travelling to other countries then I almost always turn off data roaming to avoid big surprises on phone bill later. Sometimes I need maps to find my location and directions, and built-in maps in mobile want to download all maps on-line. So, the solution was to create an application which provides you with maps without mobile data connection.

How is Fortumo involved to your service?

Nutiteq Offline Maps is using Fortumo In-App Payments for Android : users can purchase additional content (map packages). What I really like about the In-App Payments service is that users do not have to send any SMS themself – everything is done automatically, they only have to push OK.  This seamless payment experience has so far rocketed my payment conversions.

Why did you decide to use In-App Mobile Payments?

As a developer and service provider, I needed to have some kind of monetization to cover costs of service creation and maintenance. Google enables theoretically to have paid app in Android Store, but it has two issues. The first is that Google does not support in-application payments for Android applications, and for this application, where most of added value comes by downloading additional map packages, In-App mobile payments is the most logical choice. The other issue is that Google supports only very few countries where developers can publish paid apps, and my country was not among them, so I just cannot publish any paid app in the Android Market. In-App Mobile Payments was kind of natural choice for me. Mobile Payments can be a bit more expensive than typical mobile app store billing infrastructure, but in many cases the default billing is not sufficient or just not available for you – in our case we have both issues.

What has In-App Mobile Payments additionally given you?

It provides some revenue, of course, and also we can now see how in-application payment system works in practise. This marketing knowledge is also valuable asset. Also we hope to get some traction, as in-application mobile payment solutions are quite new thing and there are very small number of applications using it. I suspect that many application providers just have to provide their apps for free, as Google does not provide suitable solution for them, and they are not aware of the in-app mobile payments options. Maybe I could help them to give one idea how they can generate some additional direct revenue from their popular applications, so the applications will be better and better, instead of dying out.

As mobile penetration increases over time, more and more people are accustomed to this form of communication – not just by phone but also via SMS. In addition to instant interaction, consumers use SMS for other purposes. It does more than text messaging. SMS is one technology with five dimensions. Let’s take a look at what SMS is capable of.

SMS as Communication – Say it!

SMS has its own charisma in terms of communication — it is expressive, rich in emotions, recordable, and sometimes, avoiding embarrassment. This is the absolute mainstream that dominates the SMS markets. Communication, being the basic form of SMS, has extended to other forms such as Chat-box. Placing an SMS-Chatbox on your webpage gives you an alternative to interact with your friends and visitors. It could serve as personal interaction, or as marketing and public relations – posting ads and announcements via SMS.

SMS as Entertainment – Enjoy it!

In addition to customised jokes and mind twisters, another common type of SMS-Entertainment is song requests. By sending an SMS to request a song, the consumer conveys his/her emotions with the audio aid. A song speaks more than a thousand words, doesn’t it? For those who read Chinese, here’s a model for you. A TV programme from Yunnan, China, which used our SMS service for song request.

SMS as Information – Spread it!

The fact that we like to be well informed is without doubt. SMS, sending and receiving via mobile handsets, is the medium that synchronizes us with the information desired. The common types of SMS-Information are horoscopes, news updates and daily quotes. For regional preferences, sports tips are popular in the Balkans whereas stock exchange info is in great demand in China.

SMS as Campaign – Do it and be part of it!

SMS-Campaign is one of the common practices of short message applications. It is mainly the cooperation with service providers and/or interactive media. Consumers send an SMS to participate in the campaign, be it trivia, text-and-win, voting or registering at an event. This kind of campaign often involves short-term and impulsive consumer behaviour. Whether it’s large-scale campaigns like voting for American Idol, or small ones like local TV show’s talent-search, they all cultivate a big revenue streams from the impulsive consumer expenditure.

SMS as Payment – Pay it and play it!

Payment tools are like transportation – transferring the monetary values from the payers to the payees. SMS as payment is the most efficient way of transferring money to content/service providers and selling virtual credits. The special features with SMS – anonymity, security, spontaneity and popularity – encourage consumer spending and thus raise the revenue streams. It lives up to the consumer demands for purchasing virtual credits in real-time without delay. From provider’s perspective, the convenient buying process of SMS/Mobile-payment converts much greater purchases, and thus generates higher revenues.

The multi-dimensions of SMS allow text message to achieve other functions such as mobile payment. The alternatives do not just stop here – a lot have already been developed, for example mobile parking, mobile ticketing, and mobile banking solution. And more are yet to come.

Whichever dimensions you are interested in, Fortumo provides the best solutions with our various service types and multiple country choices. With mobile payment alone, Fortumo has upgraded from Premium SMS-Connectivity to the all-in-one international payment solution FortuMoPay.

Start to ride on the mobile wave from here.



This time we would like to present you a tool developed by one of our partners: SMS Bulletin Board. This simple Google App Engine application written by Andris Reinman can help you receive and handle mobile payments using Fortumo’s Premium SMS-connectivity service.

If you are developing your own programs using Google Apps and would like to integrate SMS payments into your application, the SMS Bulletin Board is a perfect solution for you. You can use it either to build your own application on top of it or just implement mobile payments into you existing Google App. According to the author, “the application is able to receive message notifications from Fortumo, store the message data in the database and display 100 most recent messages in the frontpage of the application”.

You can try the live demo at http://smscharty.appspot.com.

SMS Bulletin Board is provided free of charge, basing on the MIT License. More information, including installation instructions and downloads, is available at http://code.google.com/p/sms-bulletinboard/.

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!

Read the rest of this entry »

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 »