Forget E-Tickets, In The Philippines They've Got SMS Tickets

The 160Characters Association ran an interesting story this morning about Philipino airline Cebu Pacific:

Flights on Philipine domestic airline Cebu Pacific can be paid for through ATMs with the tickets delivered by SMS.

Travellers with domestic Philipino carrier Cebu Pacific (CEB) can pay for their airline tickets via the 1,700 Megalink automated teller machines (ATMs) around the country after making their booking through CEB’s call center or by text message.

Follow here for more.

Text The Vote

As a follow-up to our earlier post about Barack Obama's text messaging efforts, we'd like to point you to this story that appeared on the Washington Post's 'The Trail' 2008 election blog a couple of weeks back:

If the campaigns get it right, mobile experts say, next year's election will see "a very big bump" in youth voter participation.

That's a big "if."

So far only Sen. Barack Obama, who's emerging as the pioneering Internet candidate of the campaign (by measure of online fundraising prowess and grassroots popularity on the MySpace-Facebook-YouTube trifecta), is regularly using a text messaging campaign effectively and strategically.

And they've got a study to back up those claims:

A new study by Princeton and University of Michigan found that on the eve of last year's midterm elections, young voters who were sent message reminders were significantly more likely to vote. No surprise there, experts say, since most teenagers live on their cell phones the same way many use SMS programs on Facebook and MySpace. The non-partisan Working Assets Wireless, a mobile company that works with civic organizations, reported that sending a message reminder to vote -- particularly a succinct, to-the-point reminder -- gave a 4 percent boost in the youth voter turnout rates.

Read the entire piece at the Washington Post's website.

Oh, and if you need more proof to how mobile-savvy Barack Obama's campaign is, in addition to  a twitter-based effort, they've even got ringtones.

Blyk Launches Europe's First Free, Ad-Supported Mobile Service

In an potentially important development, Bylk has launched the first free pan-European  mobile service.  It would be interesting to see how receptive consumers are to an ad-supported service like this--unfortunately Bylk is not exactly what it first appears to be:

At a press conference in London, Blyk founders Pekka Ala-Pietila and Antii Ohrling said Monday that they have started offering subscribers 217 free texts and 42 free minutes in exchange for accepting MMS (picture messaging) and SMS (text) advertising. Customers will be charged for additional usage.

After that, you've got to pay up, which begs the question, why not just pay from the start and not bother with the ads. Nevertheless, Bylk should make for an interesting experiment.

For more, head over to Red Herring.

Sprint Intros Mobile Shopper

SPRINT NEXTEL IS GIVING RETAILERS another way to market, advertise and pull money from the pockets of subscribers. The wireless carrier on Thursday introduced Mobile Shopper that lets consumers buy products via their mobile phones through an e-commerce tool powered by mShopper, a Boulder, Colo.-based company owned by 2B Wireless.

The service allows consumers to search among 7 million products from 30 online retailers such as eLuxury, eBags, JC Penney's, Wal-Mart and Target, which have an opportunity to tie promotions and ads to Sprint's mobile Web application.

And how will Spring promote this service?

While television or radio ads won't promote the service, Sprint spokeswoman Emmy Anderson says the Kansas City, Mo.-based carrier will market Mobile Shopper through text messages sent to some of its 54 million voice subscribers. A link on Sprint's Web site provides a demonstration and literature to educate consumers.

Sprint has been the most aggressive carrier when it comes to getting voice subscribers to sign up for data services, says Julie Ask, wireless analyst at JupiterResearch.

Read more at Media Post's Marketing Daily.

The Baby Boomers Are Mobile Savvy!

We all know that the 18 - 34 demo is extremely mobile savvy (and of course teenagers and tweens in even greater percentages), but this bit of news is definitely surprising (in a good way!):

NEW DATA FROM INSIGHTEXPRESS SHOWS that when it comes to use of mobile features, Baby Boomers aren't that far behind their younger, seemingly more tech-savvy counterparts--a sign that mobile marketers and advertisers have the opportunity to tap into a wider, more diverse audience than previously thought.

The Stamford-based online market research firm surveyed more than 2000 mobile users and separated them into four age groups: Gen Y (18-24), Gen X (25-44), younger Baby Boomers (45-54) and older Baby Boomers (55-64).

Not surprisingly, mobile penetration was high across all ages, at 85% and 82% for Gens Y and X, respectively--meanwhile, 80% of younger Boomers surveyed had a mobile phone, followed closely by older Boomers at 79%.

Boomers' handsets were just as cutting edge as their younger counterparts, as 75% of younger Boomers and 68% of older Boomers had phones that supported text messaging--compared to 86% and 82% of Gens Y and X, respectively. Gen Y led the pack in actual text-message usage with 43%, followed by Gen X with 22%--but some 16% of all younger Boomers and 10% of all older Boomers sent or received text messages daily.

Head over to Online Media Daily for the rest of the findings and some interesting commentary.
 

Mobile Comic Books Are Catching On

Last week's Washington Post included an interesting story about the growing popularity of mobile comic books. With their graphic content, short size, and devoted fanbase, mobile comic books seem like a revenue generating mobile data service that just might do well for itself:

Sean Demory realized a long-held dream of becoming a published comic book writer when "Thunder Road," a post-apocalyptic adventure he developed with artist Steven Sanders, was released.

"I've been plugging away and pitching things for 15 to 20 years," Demory said. "This is the first one that landed in fertile soil."

But don't look for the tales of Merritt and his buddies on the shelves of a comic bookstore or even the Internet. "Thunder Road" is the first comic book released in the United States exclusively via cellphone, part of a lineup of mobile comic books offered by Kansas City-based uClick.

"It opens up a market that wouldn't necessarily be seen as a traditional comic market," Demory said of the launch last month.

Several companies are experimenting with putting printed material on mobile phones, including publisher HarperCollins's announcement this summer it would begin putting excerpts of new books on Apple's iPhones.

Mobile comic books are still in their infancy in the United States -- uClick says it's grown to about 55,000 readers a month in the first year of offering its GoComics service.

But it touches on two strengthening trends: Comic book creators looking to leap to the digital arena, where production and distribution are cheap, and the demand by wireless providers for data-rich applications to drive future revenues.

"Obviously comics have a pretty large following," said David Oberholzer, associate director of content programming for Verizon Wireless, which offers GoComics along with competitors AT&T and Sprint Nextel. "You want to mimic what's out there already and have that on your deck."

For $4.49 a month on Verizon, or $3.99 a month for AT&T and Sprint, subscribers can view nearly a dozen different traditional comic books. There's also a separate subscription service for Japanese comics called manga.

Read the entire article at the Washington Post.

Qzone Launches Video Classifieds For Web, Mobile Phones

Media Post's Online Media Daily has some news on the mobile classifieds front:

MOBILE FIRM IQZONE ROLLED OUT a free service that lets users create, send and post photo and video ads to online classifieds via mobile phone. Meanwhile, Yellow Book USA posted links to a set of online video ads--spots that the local search powerhouse crafted to give advertisers a preview of its forthcoming video classified offering. The two services are the latest examples of how video is shaping the development of both online and mobile classifieds.

IQzone's "Snap Send Sell" service is geared toward the under-30 market--namely, college students aiming to sell cars and textbooks, or find roommates. Users take photos or video of their merchandise, include the ad copy with price and ZIP-code info, and then send to ad@iqzone.com. The application then categorizes the item for sale and submits the ad to a number free online classifieds and aggregators like oodle, edgeio, and LiveDeal.

Classifieds are big business--newspapers rely on them for revenue--and developments like this one, along with the ever-expanding reach of Craiglist,  spell big trouble for an industry already in deep water.

California Considers SMS Emergency Alert System

Consider this situation:

When a wildfire threatened resort areas of Catalina Island off Los Angeles last week, authorities used bullhorns to spread word of an evacuation.

We know that there is a better emergency communications solution--and is seems that California has realized that as well:

"All of the cellphones within range of those towers [on Catalina Island] would ring with an emergency message," says Lt. Gov. John Garamendi (D), describing the proposed cellular alert system, which could use text and voice messages. "Visitors as well as residents on the island who had cellphones, pagers, BlackBerrys, etc., would get the message."

Cellphones are now ubiquitous – outnumbering land lines in the US – making them an obvious part of any emergency alert system.

Visit CBS to read more about California's emergency SMS alert effort.