A VC - Latest Comments in Texting In Purchases

Re: Texting In Purchases

Lily Denver — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 01:59:17 -0000

I agree texting in is a great idea but the movie rental service is horrible false advertising. I downloaded a movie only to find that the second I hit play a warning came up saying "Your movie will expire in 24 hours from now." They give you 30 days to watch the movie but 24 hours once you've started it. I think that's pretty screwed up! Apple have become such con-men. I still think the reason they haven't put the cd-rom drive in macbook air is so that people will buy more music and movies from itunes. I also completely agree with your post on the ipods!

Re: Texting In Purchases

johndodds — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:46:02 -0000

Interesting - the ecommerce possibilities of phones have been mooted for a long time in Europe (especially scandanvia) and I'm sure they'll come but it's been very slow. There's a definite economising imperative amongst kids (they operate numerous phones in order to minimise bills and maximise free texts and calls) that would seem to me to be militating against it but I'm sure it will come eventually if only because of its micropayment potential.

Re: Texting In Purchases

Dean Collins — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:53:07 -0000

I agree SMS is a convenient method to interact with a web service however dont ask USA based carriers to implement 'on-deck' or premium SMS billing as they dont have a clue.

It's staggering that the USA carriers believe single bill services warrant around 50% of the revenue (yes you read that right 50% of revenue - not profits).

So in your example with Apple and their $3 rental - Cingular expect to be paid $1.50 for on-deck premium SMS billing.

I've consulted to a number of companies both here in the USA and overseas about applications suitable for mobile ordering situations (check out www.collins.net.pr/blog for positings) but yet USA carriers still dont get why iMode third party content sales are booming in comparison.

Cheers,
Dean Collins
www.Cognation.net

Re: Texting In Purchases

markslater — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:02:37 -0000

the problem fred is one that was discussed in another topic - the carriers and their willingness to allow these type of apps to function through the deck. I suppose if you were to text to itunes your order, and the settlement were executed through your itunes account and not the carrier, then this would work - but the carriers would not want this. They still foster delusions of grandeur that they are above being a plumber unfortunately.

on a totally seperate topic - i was travelling in the pennines (between manchester and leeds) yesterday and fired up that new google maps app for the BBerry where my location identified not by GPS (my curve does not have GPS) but by triangulating my location in relation to others - it worked like a DREAM - it was extremely accurate, snappy and got me found when i was lost!

Re: Texting In Purchases

Nivekv — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:50:00 -0000

Don't give a cent to Apple! Just go to your local hollywood or Blockbuster, or even the mail one (forgot the name) but DON'T GIVE MONEY TO apple!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: Texting In Purchases

brooksjordan — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:47:12 -0000

Yep, you don't have to wait until the movie downloads on iTunes. You just give it a head start, a couple of minutes, and then watch it while it downloads in the background.

Re: Texting In Purchases

Maggie — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:56:08 -0000

you can order a pizza now through a text message, why not a movie?

http://www.marketingvox.com...

Re: Texting In Purchases

Noah Weiss — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:31:14 -0000

Last year I co-authored a paper studying this very idea. We focused on facilitating participants expanding on the 'snippets' they created on their phones. While a slightly different task, the findings are certainly relevant.

One interesting thing to note is that even when given the opportunity to use text, voice, or mms to create snippets, the vast majority of users preferred using text messages almost all the time.

See the paper at http://hci.stanford.edu/pub...

Re: Texting In Purchases

alwayslookaround — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 02:47:22 -0000

I agree, payments via SMS will soon take off in a big way. I had the epiphany of SMS based payments about a year ago, shortly after I joined a mobile SMS company. I was ecstatic about the vision (I was convinced I finally found my "go get funding" idea), started researching it, and found that PayPal and TextPayMe already had the product I envisioned:

https://www.paypal.com/us/c...

https://textpayme.amazon.co... (Gotham Gal will love this for Amazon purchases)

Neither company pushes/markets the product as much as they should, which is a HUGE mistake, but I'm sure both will receive a lot of attention as soon as consumers latch onto the concept. My guess is that the ramp up in demand will happen in about 6-9 months.

As for me, I'm still working on my "go get funding" idea. :-)

Re: Texting In Purchases

kskobac — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:57:33 -0000

interestingly and along the same vein i read an article about pizza delivery companies now accepting orders via text message: http://www.geek.com/omg-piz...

Re: Texting In Purchases

Peter Kafka — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:24:54 -0000

http://www.gomobo.com/ does this for fast food/delis as well. presented at last nytech meetup. seems like major drawback is that system has to be preprogrammed. so if you always want to get a turkey club prepared the same way at your local diner (and they use the system) works fine. but if you want sandwich w/out mayo, or extra turkey, or something else altogether, requires more work.

Re: Texting In Purchases

Jim Larrison — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:02:43 -0000

Pizza Hut just announced this today! Do they read your blog Fred?

http://www.alleyinsider.com...

Re: Texting In Purchases

Greg Cohn — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:01:29 -0000

i've always wondered why netflix doesn't let you sms to add something to your queue. their correlation between search terms and movie results is certainly good enough to get it right most of the time.

Re: Texting In Purchases

MIke — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:00:01 -0000

I'm waiting for a subscription service that streams audio and video on demand and stores my favorites and playlists. Once that is in place I won't need to own or rent anything and I won't need the storage space on my device. Anyone know who's in the lead towards this model?

Re: Texting In Purchases

fredwilson — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:35:02 -0000

Me too!

Security is overrated

And convenience is underrated

Re: Texting In Purchases

pwb — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 01:46:40 -0000

As some have pointed out, you can start watching the movie in about a minute.

The best test-to-pay use case I've seen so far is paying for parking. There are several municipalities and companies rolling out such service.

PayPal's "Text-to-Buy" is also interesting as a general putrpose payment solution.

Re: Texting In Purchases

scott partee — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 01:31:37 -0000

Here in Vienna, as in the rest of Europe, texting is huge. People are tapping away everywhere, and the utility is quite good. For example, one can text the public transit system and receive a ticket, which is then added to one's mobile bill. Numerous vendors accept texted orders, etc. But you have a *great* idea there -- it really needs to go to the next level.

I think the security is good enough as is and it would be procedural. You'd text your order to amazon as described by Dhrumil. The only required first step would be that you register your mobile number w/ the vendor before and give them permission to bill you for purchase request coming from your number. So you'd text;
1) Rent blade runner final cut
2) The vendor replies with a description of what you asked for and asks for a verification.
3) You reply
4) Vendor replies "download started successfully on your home computer".

THere's no real security problem other than permission. You don't exchange any sensitive information, and the reply mechanism ensures somebody can't text orders to your account.

Neat. I want it.

Re: Texting In Purchases

RacerRick — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:48:49 -0000

I have an elaborate blackberry-to-gmail-filter system that works like that.

I email book/restaurant/music suggestions, etc to my gmail account. Then I've setup filters based on the subject headers.

It's great for reminders/saving... but it was a pain to setup.

A text based service that does this would be very cool.

Re: Texting In Purchases

fredwilson — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 21:27:02 -0000

Great work and great comment

Thanks!

Fred

Re: Texting In Purchases

fredwilson — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 21:27:02 -0000

From my perspective its kids

Texting is email for my kids

If I want to get a message to them, that's how I do it

Once I get in that habit, the next is my wife, then friends, then twitter,
etc

Ecommerce is a natural next step

fred

Re: Texting In Purchases

lukemelia — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 18:46:04 -0000

Texting to initiate purchases is indeed a cool idea. As a few other commenters have mentioned, though. The 2-hour download is not a real problem with iTunes rentals, though.

My wife and I watched Waitress the other night from iTunes rentals, and in the time it took us to get settled on the couch, we started streaming the movie in HD without any interruption. Great movie, BTW!

Re: Texting In Purchases

Brandon Watson — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 18:08:28 -0000

Perhaps a simpler approach would be just to have a Netflix-like queue, where you always have 3 movies waiting for you on your computer. Instead of the DVD showing up, they're just there.

Re: Texting In Purchases

Maxine — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 18:00:01 -0000

My husband and I haven't had cable in 6 years and we are absolutely loving Netflix downloads. Watched The Office Season 3 this weekend show after show. No commercials, no interruptions and less than 10 seconds to begin viewing. For us, it's about the immediacy and it has also stopped us from spending on movies through Max Delivery. That said, we have to watch it on our Toshiba as we cannot view on my Mac. Grrrrr. . .

Re: Texting In Purchases

Stephen — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:35:35 -0000

Interesting, I am about to alpha launch a mobile search where email (so many mobile devices are email enabled now) is the method of initiating the search and receiving the results. Emails mean you can Cc people, larger content of message, receive attachements, etc... An element of this new service is to also offer transactional aspects like those discussed in this texting article but instead via email. Using the iPhone on the go is still not easy, simply sending an email and receiving the result is much easier.

Re: Texting In Purchases

Ashley — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:27:02 -0000

2D Barcode scanning with a cell phone will soon be deployed in the US to help users to order products adn digital services with their cell phones. Hundreds of digits can be embedded in small codes, that can be scanned and trigger sales to be ordered.

SMS is great for simple data entry, but gets harder with multiple options and complex order processes.

How often have you read a magazine article (in print) on a plane you wanted to send to a friend, or seen a billboard ad for a new TV show you wanted to record on your Tivo...text can work for some other these use cases, but 2D barcodes will be even more useful still....