Yesterday I found myself sitting at home, contemplating life’s big problems. No, not how to find happiness or balance work and family or reach spiritual enlightenment. No, those are trivial dalliances. Yesterday I was contemplating how I was going to get over this super-duper combination of sinus infection and bronchitis that I’m currently suffering from while simultaneously finding the time and energy to create the most fantastic duck costume ever…by Friday. (And you thought your life was hard.)

Of course the best way to do this would be to

1. Go to a Doc in the Box and be diagnosed with near-death syndrome.
2. Visit a pharmacy and pick up my prescribed cocktail of antibiotics and cough syrup to be taken twice a day for four days.
3. Awake from my haze just in time to rent a giant duck suit from a costume shop so I can waddle my way to a Halloween party.

(more…)

I just read that Verizon will begin charging content providers $0.03 for every message they send to Verizon subscribers.

According to the article on RCR Wireless, the carrier said that “the new fee was necessary to cover the carrier’s overhead in delivering MT messages.”

The fee will apply to standard and premium programs but not to free-to-end-user, mobile giving, or non-profit organizational programs.

That’s all, folks. For more information, check out the article.

So, maybe the Obama VP text message didn’t turn out like it was supposed to. And maybe I’m a little embarrassed because I hyped it up. But rather than rant about how horrible it was (because that’s what I thought I’d do that Saturday morning), I’m going to try, try to be objective about. Therefore, I’m going to use a numbered list because nothing is more objective than a numbered list.

1. Sending a text message to 2.9 million or so people at 3:24 AM ET is generally a bad thing. I’m a little strict about this, so I think sending a text after 7pm in most cases is pushing it (unless it’s a severe weather warning or a snow day announcement or about a dozen other reasonable things that I can’t think of at the moment). Therefore, in my mind, any time during the dark AM hours is off-limits. You risk waking up people in middle of the night (like this guy) and losing their trust, their business, and maybe even their vote.
2. Sending a text message containing information that the press leaked hours before is generally a bad thing, too. With mobile marketing, you should try to send timely, valuable information. Therefore, if everyone already knows the information you would like to present in 160 characters on their cell phone, then you also risk losing their trust, their business, and yes, maybe even their vote.

(more…)