02/21/2006
Mobile Media Technologies connects clients with wireless users
The Kansas City Star
Actress Pamela Anderson used it for Valentine’s Day. College coaches use it to lure recruits. You can even use it to trim a few bucks off your lunch tab.
Text messaging — those short messages that everyone from lovers to school principals use to stay in touch — is starting to come of age.
While American consumers have been slower than their counterparts in Europe and Asia to adopt text messaging, phone-carrying teens and 20-somethings are starting to push the technology to the forefront.
Nowhere is that more evident than at Mobile Media Technologies, a Kansas City–based company that works with media outlets, schools and other small businesses to send out more than a half-million messages every month.
In recent days, the company has signed up the Kansas City Brigade arena football team, Arizona State University and the Missouri Bankers Association to use its TextCaster text messaging service.
In recent months, the company signed up clients ranging from The Arizona Republic to the University of Texas.
TextCaster, and the clients it works with, are aiming at a key demographic that often isn’t reached by traditional media — 14- to 34-year-olds, Mobile Media CEO Rob Sweeney said.
“We’re just at the beginning of this,” Sweeney said. “That key demographic isn’t using e-mail the way you and I use e-mail. Instead, they use instant messaging and text messaging.”
The latest TextCaster deal gives Brigade fans “Code Blue Alerts” — real-time access to scores and team promotions. A deal designed to support the athletic teams at Shawnee Mission East High School offers coupons to restaurants and stores in Prairie Village. In Phoenix, the Web site AZCentral.com offers motorists real-time traffic information by text message.
All the services are voluntary. Users must sign up and request the messages.
Although not affiliated with Sprint Nextel Corp. or other wireless companies, Sweeney said, TextCaster offers an added bonus for those companies — users have to pay fees with their carriers to send and receive messages.
About 10 persons currently with Mobile Media. The company is seeking financing to expand.