SMS is one of the oldest mobile technologies; it’s been around for over a decade and is still actively used to this date. In fact, it has changed the whole gamut of communication. However, all of a sudden, text messaging has come under serious threat from newer technology because of the explosive popularity of smartphones and apps. There is every chance that text messaging as we know it will change a great deal in the next few years. The ‘old way’ of texting still has some very strong advantages; for instance, it enables cross-platform communication using a cell phone number and does not require usernames.  Most importantly, however, carriers still make a lot of money from text messaging, so they are not going to give up on it without a fight. Let’s review the latest shifts in the global text messaging space.

The first company to succeed in making a phone-specific messaging app was RIM with their BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), which BlackBerry owners use to communicate with other such users over the internet. The prevalence of other smartphones gave developers an opportunity to create similar apps on other platforms, resulting in numerous cross-platform apps like WhatsApp, which automatically finds people in your address book that already use it, so you can send them IM-style messages, pictures, videos, files and your location on the map. The cost of such apps is a fraction of what you pay for SMS – for $2 a year you get unlimited messaging; however, it is only with people who also use this service, not everyone, and that’s the only show-stopper.

SMS is also under pressure from social networks like Twitter and Facebook, both of which are found more and more often on phones and enable text-based communication with your friends. Facebook even went as far as releasing a standalone app named Messenger that is simply a dedicated app for Facebook Chat. Upon release of the app, it quickly climbed to the top of the free app charts on both platforms it was on, but left the charts soon after.

While all those apps are proving to be extremely popular, they still have a long way to go to replace traditional text messaging. The biggest concern is fragmentation. As with instant messengers online, a person using BBM can’t send a message to someone using WhatsApp, which is a problem. So if you would like to use such apps as a primary means of text messaging, you will probably need all of them, as it could be tough convincing a person to switch to another platform once they are used to the one they started with. This way you may end up with a bunch of apps that you use for the same reason but need all of them because that’s the one the recipient is using. And when you get WhatsApp, Kik, Skype, KakaoTalk, Viber, etc, there will still be a need to use SMS from time to time because you won’t find every person you know on those networks.

Also, a lot of businesses rely on SMS for their marketing and it is not yet possible to do that with the messenger apps. Imagine a company asking if you have Kik installed and if they can message you there from time to time. Of course, businesses still prefer to know your mobile number, rather than a Skype handle, so they can send you their special offers via bulk SMS services.

Every sign leads to a world in which carriers, under pressure from free messaging apps and communication giants like Facebook and Skype Microsoft, will lower text message prices so that people keep using them, most likely bundling them with your calling plan at a cheaper price. This will fit perfectly with the future in which people pay not for texts sent and minutes talked, but for the amount of bandwidth they are actually using, which is more efficient and fair anyway. There are serious economic reasons for such a model to take place, and at this point the question is not if but when.

We are excited to announce that our new TextMagic Affiliate Programme is now open and taking new affiliates.

It’s been in the works for a while, we know. But, we really wanted to get it right and offer you, our customers, the best affiliate deal we could. We’re really happy with the response we’ve had so far, and we’re sure you’ll agree that this is best affiliate deal in the SMS market.

Take a look

As an affiliate, for each new customer you refer to TextMagic you will earn:

• 10% of all revenue we get from customers you refer to us – for the life of the customer
• £15 for each new paying customer you send our way

That means that when you refer someone from your website, application, blog, or email and they sign up as a paying customer, you will earn £15, plus 10% of their first purchase – and 10% of all subsequent purchases.

Great for developers

In addition to being able to integrate our bulk SMS features into your application through our  SMS gateway API or Email to SMS, you will also earn affiliate revenue from your apps when you sign up as an affiliate with TextMagic.

Using our text message gateway gives you easy and cost-effective bulk SMS messaging for your user base, including:

• Two-Way SMS functionality with SMS reply numbers so that recipients can reply to your text messages.
• Up to 459 characters in a single text – no more annoying message breaks for long texts!

How much can you earn?

Here’s an example of what you can earn from referring a new customer to TextMagic:

£15 (First purchase bonus)

+          £10 (10% of first purchase revenue of £100)

=          £25

After that, every time they purchase more credits, you’ll earn 10%. If they purchased £100 of credits every quarter, you’d earn a further £30 that first year – and just from that one referral!

Most of our customers make many purchases over several years, so you can earn a continuous income, even after the cookie expires.

How It Works

We’ve worked hard to keep this easy-to-use, just like our SMS services:

1. A visitor clicks your affiliate link.
2. When they arrive at our website, we log their IP and place a tracking cookie on their computer (this is so we can attribute the next part to you).
3. After browsing our website, if they order, it is registered as a sale for you.
4. We review and approve the sale. You get £15 + 10%.
5. Now that your referred customer has signed up, we credit all his or her purchases as your sales, even after years have passed and the original cookie is deleted.
6. You receive your commission payouts via PayPal on the 15th of every month (as long as your balance is at least £25).

You can join our affiliate programme today. If you’d like to find out more about it, check out the affiliate section of the site.

In this new video I will show you how to collect mobile phone numbers from your website’s visitors using our mobile marketing sign-up forms.

You can use these forms to collect contacts to you mobile marketing database. All contacts will be inserted to groups. Once your database has some contacts you can send a group SMS in a few clicks to all your contacts.

With our online SMS sign-up forms, you can collect the mobile phone numbers of all your website visitors. Once you have embedded the form on your website or blog, your mobile marketing database will start to grow. All of the contacts collected will also be automatically inserted into the group you have chosen. Later, you can send a group text message to everyone who has signed up with only a few clicks.

Here is an example of what you can embed on your website or blog. You can test the sign-up process. You can easily change any element, including the color, theme, fonts, or size.

You can access the forms under My Services -> Forms.

TextMagic has recently agreed to sponsor figure skater Gerli Liinamäe to assist her with preparations for the European Figure Skating Championships held in Bern 2011. This major European figure skating event will take place in Bern, Switzerland, from January 23 to January 30 (event schedule).

She will compete in the Ladies Short Program on Friday, January 28. If all goes well, she will also participate in the Ladies Free Program on Saturday, January 29.

Gerli was born in 1995 and has been skating since she was six years old. In 2010, she won the Estonian Championships and earned the opportunity to represent Estonia in the European Championships in Bern.

Here is a photo of Gerli:

And here’s a short video of her hard at work training:

We’d like to take this opportunity to wish Gerli the very best of luck!

SMS – like many other digital and mobile communications technologies – is all about cutting out middlemen and talking right to your customer, partner, colleague, investor or voter.

His Excellency the President of Cameroon obviously has the latter group in mind, because he has recently used his national mobile phone networks to send a New Year’s message to everyone in his country.

According to Elvis Teke of state broadcaster CRTV, “it’s the first time the first couple is connecting with the masses [by] phone. Since Wednesday, 29th December 2010 mobile telephone service providers in the country have been sending out SMS messages on behalf of the first couple”.

While taking over an entire national network simply to send a text message is rather a dramatic step, it seems that 77-year-old President Paul Biya is in tune with the times; businesses and organisations are realising the benefits of mobile communications when it comes to direct contact with the people they want to reach.

Previously, if you wanted to get a message out to large numbers of people, you had to use some sort of third-party medium: advertising, public relations, journalism, publishing and so on. That added layers of complexity even if (like President Biya) you pretty much controlled your own broadcasting network. If you had to rely on media that lay outside of your control, problems were bound to occur.

Mobile comms give you absolute control over what you say and how you say it, and – best of all – they deliver your message right into the pockets of your recipients.

So, whether you’re running a business, an organisation, an African state – or you just want to keep in touch with large numbers of family and friends – SMS should be among your first choices of technology. And if you want to make sure you’re texting in the most cost-effective way possible, be sure to check out the cost-effective bulk SMS services that TextMagic offers.

Happy New Year!