GigaOM » texting

MightyText moves beyond cloud SMS, starts synching photos to the PC

Kevin Fitchard — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:02:45 +0000

MightyText may have the word “text” in its name, but its plans are bigger than just synchronizing SMS between your Android smartphone and PC. On Wednesday it launched a new version of its app that will sync your smartphone’s photos and videos with a PC or Android tablet as well.

Does that sound like Dropbox, Google Drive, or any of the numerous cloud storage and synchronization services out there? Well, that’s the idea, said MightyText founder Maneesh Arora. MightyText isn’t claiming to be technologically better than any of those services, Arora said, but it is claiming to be more convenient.

While Dropbox may be a profoundly useful service for storing and managing files, people don’t check their Dropbox folders everyday, Arora said. But MightyText’s customers do engage with its browser apps and tablet apps every day, Arora said, using them as desktop extensions of the SMS clients in their smartphones. Since customers are already receiving and sending text messages through MightyText, it’s a logical place to manage and share their smartphones photos and videos as well, Arora concluded.

As with similar services, photos and videos aren’t actually shipped to the PC, but stored in the cloud. From MightyText’s browser extensions, customers can view the files, send them off as MMS messages to anyone in the phones address book or generate a private link that customers can share through other messaging formats. The smartphone client can be set so it only uploads files when connected to Wi-Fi – otherwise data fees might get out of control for shutter flies.

Arora said the MightyText plans to add other synchronization capabilities in the future. He didn’t give any specifics, but he said the end goal is recreate as many smartphone capabilities as possible on the desktop. For instance, MightyText recently added a battery meter to its apps so customers can track their phone’s charge from their PCs.

The more immediate goal is to expand its reach. It now has 3 million users, and is developing desktop apps for the PC and Mac for customers, which will allow more people to use its services features, as well as an iPad app.

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Kik raises $19.5M to continue waging its messaging war

Kevin Fitchard — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:04:33 +0000

Kik Interactive, the over-the-top communications startup that makes the popular Kik Messenger app, has raised a $19.5 million Series B funding round, led by new investor Foundation Capital, and added Foundation partner Anamitra Banerji to its board. Benarji was Twitter’s 30th employee and first product manager, so he knows a bit about building disruptive communications apps.

Kik has been on a bit of a tear recently. After a year of inaction in the increasingly cutthroat market for OTT messaging apps, in November Kik launched a new update called Cards, which introduced HTML5-based mini-apps into its service and took advantage of its growing network of users. Since then Kik’s rate of growth has doubled from 100,000 to 200,000 new installs per day and its total customer base has grown from 30 million to 50 million registered users, the company said. Those customers have downloaded about 25 million of the card mini-apps, Kik said.

Banerji said the added functionality evolves Kik from just another OTT text upstart to a social communications platform. “There are similarities between Kik and Twitter when it comes to growth, engagement and vision,” Banerji said in a statement.

Based in Waterloo, Canada, the company is in a very crowded market where multiple dozens of competing messaging apps vie to lure consumers away from SMS into their private their networks. WhatsApp is the undisputed king of those apps, but there are numerous others, ranging from Pinger to Vibe to TextMe, all offering a slightly different set of communications features to distinguish themselves.

Kik raised an $8 million round in 2011 from Union Square Ventures, RRE Ventures and Spark Capital. All three of those investors participated in its Series B.

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Verizon launches cross-platform SMS, letting you text from your PC or tablet

Kevin Fitchard — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 22:15:29 +0000

Verizon Wireless just updated its messaging service with an interesting and extremely useful feature. The carrier will now allow you to send text and multimedia messages from your PC or tablet just as you would from your phone.

The new integrated messaging feature basically divorces Verizon’s SMS service from the device it’s attached to, virtualizing the customer’s messaging client in an Android tablet or iPad app or within a web browser. In the PC, you can activate the service in the My Messaging tab once logged into the Verizon’s customer portal. So long as the messaging portal remains open, messages will start popping up in your PC (Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer and Firefox are supported, though Explorer won’t receive pop-up notifications). On the tablet, the service works like any other messaging apps, spawning push notifications whenever a new SMS or MMS is received.

The service works very similar to many SMS forwarding and cloud-based SMS applications we’ve seen from messaging outfits like MightyText, Zipwhip or DeskSMS. The difference between, say, a MightyText and Verizon Messaging, is that Verizon isn’t intercepting messages as they reach the phone. They’re coming straight from Verizon SMS infrastructure, and require no phone client. You can utilize the service no matter what kind of mobile phone you use or whether the phone is even turned on or connected.

As over-the-top messaging services like WhatsApp, Pinger, TextMe and TextPlus start to attract users, as well as platform-specific apps like Apple’s iMessage and BlackBerry Messenger, carriers are starting to see more messaging traffic move off their traditional SMS networks. Operators like Rogers in Canada, AT&T – and now Verizon — have been trying to combat that trend by expanding their communications capabilities (and the phone number associated with them) beyond the phone.

It will be interesting to see if Verizon uses this as a building block for more cloud communications services. It could start virtualizing the phone’s voice capabilities in the browser or tablet, turning it into a mobile carrier version of Skype or Google Voice.

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Open Garden teams with TextMe to connect the unconnected tablet

Kevin Fitchard — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:00:53 +0000

Sometimes two startups were just meant to be with one another.

You can make that case for crowdsourced mesh-networking company Open Garden and over-the-top IP communications provider TextMe, which plan to announce an alliance on Friday.

Here’s the problem: TextMe turns devices that weren’t intended to be phones into phones. Its downloadable clients for the iPod touch, iPad and Android tablets bring text, voice and video chat capabilities — all linked to phone number — to what were previously data only devices. Those devices depend on an internet connection, but in most cases are only capable of receiving Wi-Fi signals: Being able to text and talk doesn’t do you much good if there’s no network connection to be found.

Open Garden has created an app that allows consumers to share their connections to the internet through a Wi-Fi mesh – sort of a utopian community that works together to ensure everyone gets the best possible connection. However, for Open Garden to really get going, it needs scale. The more devices its client is loaded into, the more broadband options are available to everyone.

So, TextMe and Open Garden have linked their apps. Starting this week anyone downloading the TextMe app to an Android device (it already has 8 million installs to its credit) will also be given the option to download the Open Garden software as well.

When the TextMe app is active — but there is no direct Wi-Fi connection to be found — it will activate the Open Garden client, which will seek to establish a peer-to-peer mesh connection with other nearby Open Garden-enabled devices. If successful, TextMe will be able to text and call freely using another device or PC’s cellular, Wi-Fi or wireline connection.

Open Garden Co-founder Micha Benoliel

Right now most people use Open Garden (it has 2 million installs to date) as a way to link their own devices together, allowing their various gadgetry to take advantage of an optimal shared connection, but Open Garden founder Micha Benoliel said the goal is to achieve the scale necessary to create truly massive crowdsourced networked By partnering with company’s like TextMe, Open Garden can reach that scale.

This might sound terrible unfair if you’re a smartphone user suddenly giving up your 4G connection to a bunch of freeriding text-happy tablet users, but Benoliel said you have to change your mindset. No one is truly unconnected, so everyone will have the opportunity to share their connection at some point whether they’re logged into a coffee-shop Wi-Fi network or connected to a home broadband line. Eventually, though, Open Garden to plans to introduce controls that will allow users to limit how much bandwidth they give up.

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Hope springs eternal: FCC says in 18 months you can text 9-1-1

Stacey Higginbotham — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 14:42:03 +0000

Updated: Finally! The FCC has announced a voluntary two-year plan to allow users on the nation’s four largest carriers to text 9-1-1, and actually be assured of getting the help they need. The FCC expects the plan to go into effect in most areas next year with the 90 percent of the nation’s wireless subscribers receiving coverage by May 15, 2014.

This plan is part of the FCC’s overall attempt to adapt the rules and regulations of the landline era to the current mobile and IP world and is specifically part of the agency’s Next Generation 911 (NG911) services. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski had called for this ability about two years ago, so it’s good to see momentum building.

When it comes to 9-1-1 calls on mobile phones, there are many examples of problems, even when dealing with voice. Carriers have had the ability to locate citizens in a general area using cell-phone tower triangulation for a long while, and with the rise of GPS on devices, that ability to find a user’s location has only grown more exact. So while pinpointing location has become less of an issue for people who make voice calls into 9-1-1, a big sticking point on texts has been that the call centers receiving 9-1-1 calls haven’t been set up to receive those messages. The FCC will work with all parties, including services that provide over-the-top texting options, such as Pinger or WhatsApp to ensure that consumers can reach 9-1-1 via text message.

As for implementation, during the transitional phase if someone texts 9-1-1 the carriers have committed to sending a bounce back text if the text did not go through. I can imagine in certain emergency situations where a call isn’t possible, getting a failed bounce back text that causes your phone to beep might also be dangerous. The four carriers will fully implement this “bounce back” capability across their networks by June 30, 2013.

The FCC also wants to remind people that texting 9-1-1 is complement, not a replacement for calling 9-1-1, and consumers should do that if possible even after they send a text. It’s possible that they may even be able to do more if the FCC’s more ambitious plans come to pass. The agency is looking at using cell phones and texts as a resource to share information about emergency situations with public safety officials. From the release:

“We will also take additional steps in this area next year, including closely monitoring carriers’ compliance with the commitments they have made today and addressing other aspects of Next Generation 911 such as enabling transmission of photos and videos to 9-1-1 centers. We are also working to strengthen the resiliency and reliability of the existing 911 system, where significant deficiencies were revealed by this summer’s Derecho.”

More information is always a good thing in times of crisis, and taking advantage of smartphones, rather than just bringing them up to the standard of landlines is a good move.

Update: A previous version of this story said the FCC set this voluntary plan, but the plan was agreed upon by the four carriers, NENA-The 9-1-1 Association and APCO, the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials. The FCC will review that plan.

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MightyText brings SMS to the tablet, passes 1M users

Kevin Fitchard — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 17:48:26 +0000

In the five months since it came out of its not-so-private beta, MightyText has seen interest in its PC-to-Android smartphone SMS synchronization service surge. It’s nearly quintupled its user base from 250,000 to 1.2 million and is on pace to deliver 4 billion messages this year. MightyText, however, isn’t stopping at the PC. On Wednesday it launched a new beta Android tablet app, which allows customers to turn their Kindle Fires and Nexus 7 tablets in to texting devices.

MightyText isn’t your typically over-the-top messaging startup. Rather than cannibalize operator SMS services by launching its own texting app like WhatsApp, BlackBerry Messenger, or Apple’s iMessage, MightyText rides over the SMS client on an Android smartphone, using the device’s data connection to almost instantly replicate every message sent or received on the PC through a browser extension. Ultimately, MightyText is acting as an SMS proxy, not a replacement.

Users have been able to text from their tablets as well, but only through an open browser window, which led to an onslaught of requests for MightyText to develop a dedicated Android tablet SMS client, MightyText CEO Maneesh Arora said. The beta app is private so you won’t find it on Google Play, but new users registering for MightyText on its website will get access, while existing users can contact the company directly via email to request a download link, Arora said.

MightyText has also polished up its interface, introducing a new PowerView mode in the browser that shows all recent SMS conversation as open threads on one screen. It also introduced a handy battery monitoring feature that shows the current power levels of your phone on the PC.

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MightyText: a texting service you (and your carrier) will love

Kevin Fitchard — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 22:10:17 +0000

MightyText, a startup founded by two ex-Googlers, has taken the beta wraps off of its over-the-top messaging service, which extends an Android phone’s SMS capabilities to PCs and tablets. Using the same phone number, a MightyText user can send and receive text messages from a PC or tablet browser in perfect synchronization with their SMS inboxes. As long as your phone is on and has a data connection, you can pretty much text from anywhere.

Generally any new over-the-top messaging app launch makes operators cringe as it represents another potential blow to their lucrative SMS revenues. That’s not the case with MightyText, founder Maneesh Arora explained. Every message sent using the service uses the operator’s SMS infrastructure, meaning carriers collect their messaging revenues no matter where the text originates, Arora said.

“We’re actually routing all messages through the phone,” Arora said. “Android is so open and powerful it allows you to do that.”

A behind-the-scenes smartphone client downloadable from Google Play copies every text as soon as it hits the device and then instantly forwards it over the phone’s data connection to MightyText’s servers. A browser extension, available for Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer, then spits out the message on your computer screen.

The return path works the same way. You type a message into your browser and select a recipient from your synched contact list, and MightyText rushes it to the device over the IP channel. The app software then deposits that info into an SMS, which the phone sends like any other text message. Arora said making the service as near real-time as possible was key, and MightyText’s aim is to produce no noticeable lag between an SMS showing up on the phone and a PC screen.

MightyText is billing the app as an iMessage for Android users, but in truth it has a far broader scope. iMessage only works between Apple devices and relies on a user’s Apple ID. MightyText relies on something far more universal: a mobile phone number. What’s more, it uses an Android user’s existing phone number, not an alternate one such as Google Voice. And since it accesses the SMS client on the device, messages aren’t sent through an unrecognizable proxy number.

Arora said MightyText has one beta customer that leaves his smartphone plugged in at home in the U.S. when he travels to India. He then text messages his friends and colleagues overseas from his laptop browser, incurring no roaming charges.

Speaking of beta customers, MightyText has an awful lot of them — 250,000 to be exact. Those users are sending a 2 million messages a day and those totals are rapidly growing. Opening the service up to the public at large will part those flood gates further.

Arora said MightyText is looking to grow its user base before it starts looking at revenue opportunities. “First let’s show massive consumer demand,” he said. But he acknowledges that a big potential revenue channel will be the operators.

MightyText is a really a service the carriers should have developed themselves as a way to keep their text messaging services relevant. Some operators have tried to expand the boundaries of their SMS services to the IP realm, most notably Rogers Communications in Canada. But others like AT&T and Verizon have chosen to protect their SMS revenues by simply requiring customers to buy expensive unlimited texting plans.

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You’ll likely save money with Verizon’s “Share Everything” plans

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 13:56:10 +0000

Verizon announced “Share Everything” plans on Tuesday, which lets customers buy one bucket of data for use with up to 10 devices on the same account. These are the family plans that Verizon has been looking into for over a year in order to help consumers better manage and use their mobile broadband data allowance. Instead of buying a data plan for each device — tablet, laptop and multiple smartphones, for example — one monthly charge covers voice, messages and data to be shared across all capable devices.

To price the plans, customers choose the types of devices they want to use — up to 10 — as there’s a variable monthly line fee:

$10 a tablet
$20 per MiFi, USB dongle or notebook with integrated broadband
$30 for a basic phone
$40 for each smartphone

In addition to the line fee, customers will chose the amount of shareable data for each month. Each of these prices includes unlimited voice minutes and texting.

$50 = 1 GB
$60 = 2 GB
$70 = 4 GB
$80 = 6 GB
$90 = 8 GB
$100 = 10 GB

Given that voice usage is in decline and that messaging is a high profit margin product for carriers, plus there are many free alternatives, I find it disappointing that the data prices include these. The line fee alone for a device ought to cover that, but revenues from these products keep the money rolling in for carriers. But this may not be an issue since you can still save money with these plans.

This depends on your particular case, of course. I did a quick estimate of a basic plan with 4 GB of shared data, unlimited minutes/texts and 2 smartphones and saved $30 a month with “Share Everything” even with $80 in line fees for the phones. Those unlikely to save: Folks with several feature phones and/or limited voice minutes and message plans.

But the real benefit here to end users is that instead of some family members blowing through a data bucket while others have data to spare, the data usage can be spread out. That’s a win — and something I called for last year with examples of my own family’s use — even if it’s only a small victory.

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The newest phone app teens will hate but parents will love

Kevin C. Tofel — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:22:28 +0000

With 11 teens killed while texting and driving per day, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that parents are turning towards apps to limit their kids’ phone use behind the wheel. The sad statistic comes from Chris Holbert, CEO of SecuraFone, which offers an app for iPhone and Android handsets that diables some phone features when moving 5 mph or more. SecuraFone doesn’t stop there though: It also allows parents to monitor where their kids are driving and how fast they’re going.

SecuraFone was one of several safety apps featured on NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams earlier this week:

Note that some features are free while premium functions cost $8.99 per month; the SecuraFone site isn’t clear which are free and which are premium.

I’ve seen apps similar to SecuraFone, but this one goes a few steps further than most and here’s where the teens will really cringe.

If teens need to text for an emergency or some other reason, they have to use the app to send a request to their parents; a 15-minute window of communications can be granted. Aside from disabling texts, the software can use a handset’s GPS to track location, complete with a 90 day history. Parents can also set up a geo-fence boundary and receive an alert when their kids pass beyond the borders. And parental alerts are also available if kids drive faster than a certain speed. Perhaps these additional functions are a bit much for most, but at its core, SecuraFone offers some peace of mind for parents.

One of my kids is set to hit the driving age in 2013, so I’ll be giving these types of apps some serious thoughts between now and then. I’m curious: Are any of our readers already using one of these, and if so, what do the kids think?

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Meet the new pipe, same as the old pipe? Texting turns 20

Stacey Higginbotham — Mon, 07 May 2012 22:54:58 +0000

The humble text message turned 20 years old this weekend according to the Guardian, and other than an excuse for cake, the birthday is a great chance to look at how carriers innovate and why they are getting crushed by over the top services now that times have changed. So grab your piece of Funfetti, whistle a few bars of the Birthday Song and let’s take a look at why carriers are losing to over the top services: and how they might manage to make it out with margins intact.

The Guardian’s (see disclosure below) story lays out in detail the creation of the text messaging standard. It describes the creation of GSM as a reaction to the complicated and varied analog phone standards in use across Europe. It took ten years from idea to the time the first GSM call was made, and the effort involved 13 countries. As part of creating the GSM standard for networks, the carriers wove in a way to share messages across operators as well. From the article:

The idea for SMS emerged during the GSM project. It was based around a really neat trick – to transport messages on the signalling paths needed to organise telephony during periods when those control channels were quiet. This was a fantastic idea because it meant that there was no extra cost involved in transporting the messages. The only restriction was that they had to be short – no more than 160 seven-bit characters. So SMS was built into the GSM system from the beginning.

And while texting seems like a great example of carrier innovation, it was actually a result of this multi-governmental body demanding that operators find a way to interoperate. So carriers didn’t act alone according to this article. And the usage came about far later than the availability of SMS texting services thanks to young people, who were finally able to afford mobile phones but wanted to avoid high prices on calls. So in truth, texting, a service so innovative that its use is still on the rise today, achieved success (and incredible margins for operators) in spite of the carriers.

And now, as carriers see their high-margin texting revenue coming under attack form over the top messaging services such iMessage, WhatsApp and others, the question most people who follow the industry asked was, “What will carriers do to trip up the competition?” Carriers have been known to block everything from Wi-Fi on handsets to Skype in order to protect their margins, and so it seemed logical they might go after OTT services again.

But carriers are changing. Now instead of a direct block, they are co-opting their competition and may in fact be doing so in ways that will help both consumers and OTT providers, even it it does mean carriers may not get as much as they want. It seems finally the industry might be wising up to the idea that expanding the whole pie might be beneficial even if the carriers have to share the revenue.

Examples of this change in heart include WhatsApp considering a deal with Telefonica to providing messaging services. Or plans from Orange and T-Mobile to include unlimited music streaming services on the phone as part of a data plan. Areas where operators can add value (and thus get paid more) are focused in enterprise settings as opposed to consumer areas for the most part, although mobile security and tie-ins with wireline broadband and home network automation plans might also be something consumers shell out for. Check out the chart above from Chetan Sharma, which lays out areas where carriers might find ways to add value on top of their data plans.

But for carriers to make this leap from the antagonistic “get off my pipes” worldview to becoming one layer among several in a mobile ecosystem, they will have to stop clutching at this myth that they are a bastion of innovation. Instead, they should accept that while they may be innovative as anything when it comes to transmitting packets, no one transmits packets for the sake of transmitting packets. In the pre-IP world they could hang onto the idea that only they could deliver voice, but in a post-IP world they have to realize that while only they can deliver data, data isn’t exactly the service. It’s just another delivery mechanism.

And people don’t buy delivery mechanisms. They buy services.

Disclosure: Guardian News and Media Ltd., the parent company of the Guardian newspaper, is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media.

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