Enterprise Mobility company ValueFirst (VFirst), a part of Rajesh Jain's Emergic Ecosystem, has entered into the direct-to-consumer business via its subsidiary SpotOn Media, with a service called SMSMEON (i.e. SMS-me-on) Free Keyword On Short Code SMSMEON gives consumers their own keyword on ValueFirsts short code - 56070. Users can set their status message, and their friends can pull the same information by SMSing the keyword to 56070. Users can also set up sub-keywords like Location, Plans etc, which they can update to provide their "followers" with requisite information. While the prospect of having their own keyword on the mobile might excite some, I do believe this particular pull based service has its limitations because of two reasons: -- User Behaviour: A pull based service required users to take an initiative to actively seek out information. This is often on an impulse, and this works better as a push based service. Take the example of Twitter - if you had to individually check for status updates from each person whom you were following, you would probably not check often, and follow very few people. -- Cost: to check for updates on a short code, a user would have to pay Rs. 3 to the operator. This will inhibit usage. Compare this to SMS GupShup, which enables you to push updates to users for free, though it uses a long code. -- Duplication: What prevents other service providers from setting up the same service on a long code? That's a Rs. 1…
