Communities Dominate.. SMS Communities Too! Check out SMS All from Pakistan

I saw an awesome presentation when I was in Sri Lanka giving a keynote to their annual big telecoms event. (Sri Lanka is the country on the island of Ceylon, just off the South-Eastern tip of India). One of the speakers was Idrees Butt the COO of a company called SMS All, Pakistan's largest social network with a twist - it runs on SMS text messaging.

Boy why didn't I see this coming? I mean, Twitter was built so, that each Tweet of 140 characters fits inside an SMS text message that runs 160 chracters. But yes, what is the SMS All then? They do very basic communities-oriented social network management running on SMS. Anyone can join, you don't need a PC (the service also works on PCs but PC penetration in Pakistan is very low). You don't need a smartphone (again, the vast majority of handsets in use in Pakistan are basic or featurephones, not smartphones). And all runs on SMS. You create your own account, set up your own little communities around what you like, be it your school mates or a fan club aroudn your favorite cricket team or the upcoming James Bond movie Skyfall, etc. Whatever. And then invite your friends to join and you can have a micro-blogging experience similar to Twitter, and updates and sharing like Facebook, but all built to run on basic SMS.

It works on all networks in Pakistan. Each message costs a very tiny bit and if you manage communities, there is a limit to how many messages you can send in mass-mailing type of broadcasts, where if you send a lot (or receive a lot) you are then asked to pay a little bit more. The have 4 million active users already, and 400,000 communities already set up within SMS All. They are the biggest SMS based social network in Pakistan (probably in the world) and are now starting to expand abroad. Very VERY clever simple service that brings 'communities dominate' social networking experiences to those who are not yet owning a PC or tablet or smarpthone and can't use the 'traditional' big social networks like Facebook. They have all the usual suspects from user-generated content to citizen journalism to various political parties using it - they will have the actual political party internal elections even run on SMS All for one of the parties that is very active in social media. There is advertising and sponsoring and a free version on a limited scale where you can have the basic services totally free. Brilliant!

Brilliant, brilliant service - congratulations to the team that set it up, and if you want to spread a story of good will from the Emerging World markets, here is one fabulous success story from Pakistan. SMS All. And I hope this spreads soon to all major parts of the Emerging World, lets not keep it only a Pakistani secret, eh? See more at their website SMS All.

Comments

[Dopey]

Wouldn't SMS Gupshup be bigger, globally?

[Donkey Kong]

Tomi, what about GroupMe? It's group based messaging that's accessible via SMS or data. (You can have mixed groups as well, dumbphones + smartphones.) It was acquired by Skype a while ago, so it's now under the control of Micro$oft... Still it ought to be one of the bigger SMS messaging tools out there.

[Mark Tidor]

Wow! Indeed, simple and brilliant. I have heard about them from other sources. Very heartening to see such success from places one least expects!

[Tomifan]

I don't think anyone "saw that coming". But the one with most SMS-friendly featurephones will win the game. ;-)

[Former Symbian Evangelist]

Good spot. I also know that Nokia started with similar themes with their Beta Labs project - "Nokia Mobile Communities" - http://betalabs.nokia.com/apps/nokia-mobile-communities

In supported countries (like India) you could create/join groups and then communicate with SMS. The service would charge for a standard SMS (as per your mobile plan) and all members of the group would get the message. But most interestingly, you could join a group with *any* SMS capable device. It doesn't even have to be a Nokia phone. You only needed a Nokia phone to create/manage a group.

It was first published in July 2010 and the application last updated in October 2010.

[Muhammad Nasrullah]

The innovation in the SMS space in Pakistan is actually staggering because Mobile users out numbers Internet users 5 to 1. A much more powerful social network in Pakistan is Pring (http://pringit.com) and you can see a large number of brands doing some amazing stuff there like Nokia: http://pringit.com/nokia Levis: http://www.pringit.com/levis, Sunsilk: http://www.pringit.com/sunsilk Dominos Pizza: http://www.pringit.com/dominos
Political parties use it a two-way platform: http://www.pringit.com/imrankhanpti

The great thing about Pring is that it is not SMS only and does not exclude high-end movers and shakers. You can find details and case studies here: http://business.pringit.com

(Full Disclosure: I work at Pring)

[Simon Moore]

I first heard of SMSall.pk in an ICTD conference several years ago from one of its founders. Great to see that they have come such a long way and all their hard work in these years is spurring others like the one Muhammad mentioned and Nokia communities. I believe that such systems need an enabling ecosystem to succeed, which nokia communities seem to lack. At the time I heard of SMSall.pk (then called chopal I think), they seemed ahead of time -- apparently the ecosystem has now caught up with them ...

Is there similar success in the mobile payments space in Pakistan, another market heavily dependent on an enabling ecosystem?

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