Earlier this morning I met with Sarik Weber, co-founder of Hamburg, Germany-based mobile callback service, Cellity. He brought me up to speed on his company, but he also mentioned that they had launched a Facebook application that allows you to send free SMS messages to anyone worldwide.
I signed up for the app but also looked at the competitive landscape and found that there are around three dozen (free) SMS-related apps, but they have little or no usage. Even the best ones get about 500 users a day, though most have fewer than 50 daily users. (Related story: 5 Ways to SMS for free.)
The state of these SMS apps is no different from many social voice applications (voice widgets). The only difference being that the VoIP widgets have high incidence of installs but comparatively low daily usage.
| App Name | Daily active users | % of total |
| Babuki SMS | 645 | 3% |
| Send SMS | 2,099 | 0% |
| Shickclick | 1,106 | 5% |
| SMS | 500 | 2% |
| SMSfree | 224 | 6% |
These two examples make me question the viability of Facebook as a communications hub. Our columnist Daniel Berninger has eloquently made an argument for a social directory that uses Facebook and other social networks to break away from the current paradigm of numeric phone numbers.
He is part of a group that believes social networks could be used to authenticate our “communication” relationships. I don’t necessarily disagree with Daniel, but the usage metrics of SMS and voice apps makes me wonder if Facebookers really want to do anything more than throw Vampire Bites, Scrabble and pretend to have a lot of friends.
Nope, we really don’t want to do anything more than that… Oh, and look at all the pictures of our drunken college escapades in order to remember exactly what happened the night before. But that’s about it. I don’t think it’s going to be easy to squeeze money from poor college students.
Perhaps SMS is just about the most low-brain means to communicate. Maybe Facebook users are too literate to bother with SMS idiocy?
@ Michael,
Low brow doesn’t necessarily mean bad way to communicate. However, Facebook might not be the ideal gateway it seems.
I would think that most of the people who know much about SMS and would use it more than occasionally already have an SMS plan with their mobile provider and simply send SMS messages using their phone. Why would I go to my computer and open Facebook when I can simply tap out a text anywhere using my phone? I don’t mind paying for a plan to get the convenience factor.
Also, note that Facebook’s Mobile application currently logs nearly 400,000 daily active users. People (including myself) use it all the time to interact with Facebook both in sending and receiving SMS/EMS messages.
I personally don’t see how your concluding sentence follows from the rest of the article… I’ve looked at some of the Facebook SMS apps, but they didn’t really make sense to me. (Make sense in terms of purpose and features, not in terms of usability.)
Nobody uses SMS in the U.S.
Nobody uses SMS through Facebook.
Therefore, Facebook is not a viable communications hub.
Makes perfect sense to me!
SMS might as well stand for “Substitute Message Service,” since it is really a lower-quality alternative to email.
SMS doesn’t thread easily, doesn’t take any attachment, makes it tough to communicate with groups, is only readable from one device, winds up being tough to categorize, store and search, necessarily gives other people access to your phone number…. With greater smart phone penetration it will soon disappear from the rich world.
It is most popular among teens, who, unlike adults who work in offices, are moving around all day and usually without access to email. Others use it because it’s the only way they can send text-based messages from their dumb phones, or because their friends don’t have email-capable phones (or both).
Now imagine someone sitting down to a computer and choosing to use SMS instead of email. It’s even dumber than developing an app to enable it.
@ Joey Tyson
You say: Why would I go to my computer and open Facebook when I can simply tap out a text anywhere using my phone? I don’t mind paying for a plan to get the convenience factor.
I thought people were spending days logged into Facebook and lived inside fB and that is why they were the new social OS etc etc etc…. 😉
@ Paul,
You are making same points as I have in the past about, replicating communication functionality inside fB isn’t the answer. Making it compelling, that’s another story. Nice comment by the way.
You made a good point, Om, we are also currently investigating, how we could promote our cellity freeSMS app on Facebook a little more. It works fine and what´s strange is, that in the mobile world it´s actually one of the most successful free mobile Java clients around. Just check here and also look at the user feedback: http://www.getjar.com/products/10337/cellityfreeSMS
In order to learn more about how Facebook app building and distribution works in Europe we will organize the first German Facebook Developer Garage in Hamburg, May 14, expecting about 300 Facebook app developers to attend. The next day will be also the Next 08 Web 2.0 conference in Hamburg, so even a far trip from the US could be well worth it. If you are interested in the Developer Garage, please join our Fb group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11222753500
SMS is huge is India. Check out http://tagg.in , SMS based social network in India.
Facebook encourages a definition of “friend” that encompasses a much larger group than those people I would want to interrupt with an SMS or a phone call. If I know someone well enough to SMS or call them, I already have them in my contact list and synced to my mobile phone from which I can message or call them without opening any widgets. I think there is plenty of opportunity to use SMS as a way of connecting people with applications, but if two people just want to talk to each other they will reach for the phone.
The photo’s a bit dark. Couldn’t you have turned up the contrast in Photoshop?
Om:
Not sure why the comment i left yesterday didnt show up. Anyway, copying the same again.
Thanks for linking my article. I always thought that SMS messaging would be a great fit for social networking. Well, looks like it’s not the case. Talking about Voice Apps on facebook, I thought they might take a little longer to get traction from Social Networking community. Check out my latest article I wrote about facebook and MySpace voice apps. (It doesn’t look promising) http://latestgeeknews.blogspot.com/2008/04/do-we-really-need-voice-apps-for.html.
I guess u are right, facebook and MySpace users like Vampire Bites, Hug Me or Super poke than these communication apps.
Here are the list top 10 facebook apps:
Super Wall
Top Friends
FunWall
Hug Me
Movies
SuperPoke!
Likeness
Compare People
iLike
Superlatives
Cheers,
omfut
@OM I have tried most of the methods in the article, http://gigaom.com/2007/03/12/free-sms/ and found that peekamo was the way to go for sending sms from the web or from phone. Your phone number stay a secret and people can reply to your messages directly to your phone.
What I really like about the service is its ability to use local short codes to send sms from my phone to my friends all around the world and it costs be only my local texting charge from my phone. Obviously from the web it’s free.
If you haven’t checked out http://www.peekamo.com out yet, I suggest you give them a shot. Btw, I also think jaxter is cool, but I have not been able to successfully send messages every time, I think jaxter will probably catch up to peekamo but for now it’s no competition really.
SMS is an one-to-one, on-the-go, using a simple interface, instantaneous mean of communication.
Social networking is an one-to-many, in front of a PC / notebook, using a very rich interface, asincronous mean of communication.
There is long way before these two means of communication may go together.
Twitter is the SMS of the web.
There are many simple ones that give you trial SMS text messages. Found that http://www.Bubbletext.com was the way to go for sending sms text messages from the web safely. You can add credits anytime using Paypal.
There are lots out there too…
The problem with these so called free sms sites is that they are not free. I am always on FB, and honestly speaking, taking my fon out of my pocket to sms whilst on the net aint exactly my cup of coffee. I would rather do everything on the PC, but then these sms sites will give you 2 trial SMSes then ask for payment, so I have given up and decided to just use my fon instead.