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AQA2U: UK-based mobile microblogging service could make publishers money, but it costs

AQA2U: UK-based mobile microblogging service could make publishers money, but it costs

Yesterday I received a press release about a new service available to UK-based mobile phone users called AQA2U.

Set up by the existing AQA text messaging service, it allows anyone to set up an account and then send SMS alerts to anyone who has decided to follow them.

Though it’s free for a publisher to register, it costs 98p for someone to subscribe (by texting the chosen topic name to 63336) and thereafter it costs 25p each time they receive a text, up to a maximum of £3.50 per month. The publisher can make around 7-9p per subscriber per message.

While I’m struggling to see why people would pay to receive text alerts from people when they could just sign up to Twitter, it seems that there are some fans (bear in mind that this was in the press release).

Celebrity photographer Dave Hogan said that “This is a great system. I’m not a twitterer or blogger and don’t get much time to sit at computers, so this works well for me – gives me a way of letting people know what I’m doing by phone.”

Great in the sense that both Dave and AQA could be making a reasonable income from this if it takes off. In fact, doing just a little digging would have shown Mr Hogan that it’s perfectly possible to send Twitter updates from a mobile device, and cheaper (or free) for followers to receive them, even by mobile.

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It will be interesting to see if the service takes off, given that it costs and it’s currently only available in the UK.

AQA2U

View Comments (5)
  • Although the SMS alert is a good idea, I would not pay a subscription fee to this type of SMS alert. I am pretty confident services similar to this provided AQA2U, is provided free by some of its competitors.

  • Get funny, thought provoking and interesting quotes and sayings direct to your mobile. To subscribe text “SAYINGS2U” to 63336.

  • I run a couple of websites where I try to highlight useful things for people – sometimes bringing together 2-3 ideas that would work well together, but I’ve been sitting on AQA2U for over a year now, occasionally turning my thoughts to it and wondering how people could make money from it. So far I’ve not found a valid use for it that people would be willing to sign up for.

    The main limitations I see are:
    – value for money, especially in these times
    – the frequency of the text isn’t that great, with 14 per month it’s difficult to fit that into any kind of regular pattern and remain valid/useful

    So, off the top of my head …. all I can think of is if you lived in the centre of a major City where celebs hang out, you could send texts to say where you just spotted a celeb. This could be marketed to papparazzi … but the volume limit still gives you a problem. If you send out a text to say a B list Celeb is in a particular bar, then it’d be really annoying if you turned the corner and spotted the Queen of England playing darts in a pub! So, nope, it still doesn’t fit.

    I’ll come up with something one day!

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