SMS Channels from Google
Google just launched a labs project called SMS Channels. Seems very similar to what we’re doing with MyToday. What a coincidence… 
I think it had to happen at some point considering the numbers we have. But, I wouldn’t really conclude that Google is taking on MyToday with this labs launch. My guess is that this is a 20% project and not a “let’s crush these midgets” type strategic move. Many Google products are born from 20% projects, so you never know how far they’ll take it. Either way, competition is always good and the attractiveness of the space got validated some more. Of course, whether competiton from Google is good is open to debate.
Update: Rajesh has posted an interview he gave on the competition from Google.
Thejo
If the monetization is going to be via advertising, then a part of the advertising pie that would have been due to MyToday and GupShup. Even if it is 20 percent of the plan, it is “taking them on”.
The rest of the 80 percent would be connecting a phone number and mobile content preferences to their massive profiling, taking other Google services to SMS, and maybe something that will surprise us.
By Nikhil on 10.02.08 8:21 am
Nikhil,
I was wondering aloud if this is a strategic move to take everyone else on. Many Google products have a history of starting off as a 20% project which then became big. SMS Channels may not be such a product. I have no idea…
But, what is true is that in the near term, it’s not going to be easy to start sending out a huge number of messages. If anyone can do it Google can, but it’s going to take some time to ramp up to that scale.
Depending on the amount of effort Google is willing to put into this, they could be serious competition to other players in the space. We can’t also discount the fact that competition isn’t the only option open to everyone
By Thejo on 10.02.08 12:22 pm
I just left this as a comment on another blog, but I don’t think we should underestimate the RSS integration with SMS. I know MyToday also provides the very same service, but Google’s implementation is just so amazingly simple. A sample –
– Today you can subscribe to your GMail via RSS feeds. You can take the same RSS feed, and start an exclusive Google SMS channel (obviously not allowing anyone else to subscribe). That way, you’ll get an alert for each email.
Similarly, you can do a Google News search, say, for “Lewis Hamilton”, and add that RSS feed to a separate Google SMS Channel. And you create your own news alert.
By Nikhil on 10.02.08 6:40 pm
But, what is true is that in the near term, it’s not going to be easy to start sending out a huge number of messages. If anyone can do it Google can, but it’s going to take some time to ramp up to that scale.
Great point. I received an alert for a MediaNama post (ironically, the one on Google) in the morning. I’d done the post at night. I guess availability of bandwidth on the SMSC is going to be an issue. That is something which you guys also struggle with, I guess.
By Nikhil on 10.02.08 6:43 pm
Yes, exposing usable interfaces to things we’ve built is not exactly something we’ve been good at. We can learn a lot from Google’s implementation. But as far as making the RSS integration easier for bloggers and other consumers of feeds, the important question to ask is, will the usage be substantial? With the internet penetration in India, will it bring in the users in large numbers? It’s a debate we’ve had internally too, and decided to focus on making sure every thing can be done via SMS. That’s worked for us, but you can be sure that we’ll put in the effort to make things better on the usability front if we can see that it is indeed bringing in a large number of users.
A huge issue. The one issue that will determine whether the service is going to do well. I haven’t used all of the features the service provides yet, but I can see from the FAQs some of the same product design mistakes we had made. In SMS land a very small number of users can quickly ruin the QoS for everyone else unless the design accounts for abuse of every feature. It’s not just the technology, but also learning about and working through the constraints imposed by the medium that can take time.
By Thejo on 10.02.08 7:46 pm
[...] will obviously be higher for the daytime hours. As Thejo had mentioned in response to my comment on his blog, availability of bandwidth on the SMSC is huge issue, “one that will determine whether the [...]
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