Conversationblog

With 3GSM on its way I thought I would post about Zong, a new service I discovered recently. It is an interesting one because it allows your content to go further than the web, namely to mobile phones in SMS format.

Zong is a full online platform which allows you to syndicate & sell your online content in Europe. The first application I created was a RSS to SMS service.

In short, if you SMS the keyword CONVBLOG to 3236 you'll be subscribed to my blog updates through text on your mobile. Mind you, this service will cost you 0.50€/SMS.

Now, I can't see why people would actually pay for my blogposts but I can imagine scenarios where this could work; critical updates on very targeted topics, stock fluctuations, eBay bidding, last minute flight changes etc...

The service offers different applications like Z-Quiz (setting up SMS an quiz), Z-Vote (voting per SMS), Z-Box (comments/feedback per SMS) but Z-Pay is definitely one to try out.

Z-Pay allows you to create a micro content payment system per SMS. Imagine you have prime content on your blog (a white paper for instance) and you want to charge people a small fee for downloading it. Here's how it works.

When end-users get on your SMS pay payment page, they're invited to send an SMS message containing your payment code to a specific short number (one by country), for example SP COOL (if you choose COOL as a keyword) to 88999. End user gets billed and received a PIN code.

With this PIN code clients will then be able to go to the secured webpage and download your content.

I think we'll see more services in this space as content becomes more and more mobile.

Technorati : 3gsm, RSS, barcelona, mobile, mobile phone, sms, text, zong