Russell Beattie

Hmmm. It seems that MySpace's "exclusive" mobile deal with Helio must be using some other form of the word that we hadn't heard of before. (Shh! Don't tell Scott! I'm not sure he'll be able to take it!) This morning when I logged in to MySpace to approve some new friends requests (and get rid of some morons), I noticed a new link on home page dashboard: "Get MySpace alerts on Cingular - New!" Huh?!? That's surprising considering last week's announcements, no?

As I happen to be a Cingular Subscriber, I clicked the link, went through the easy three-step signup/confirmation process and immediately got a message from "Tom" in my MySpace mail online:

Subject: Myspace Mobile Activated
Body: Congratulations, your Myspace Mobile feature has been activated for the following phone number: 4151231234.

You have opted to receive text message notifications on your mobile phone for the following:
- Friend Requests
- Blog Comments
- Profile Comments
- Image Comments
- New Messages
- Event Invites

By choosing to receive mobile notifications from MySpace, you are electing to receive text messages to your wireless device. MySpace does not charge additional fees for this service but you may incur standard charges from your wireless service provider in connection with receipt of such messages. If you want to cancel mobile alerts at any time, return to your account settings and disable mobile alerts or send ‘STOP’ to short code MYSPC.

To change your Mobile Settings, including which notifications you would like to receive, go to "Account Settings" and click "Mobile Settings".

Click here to change your Mobile Settings now: http://settings.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=mobileSettings.mobileSettings

Interesting! They've got their own shortcode (MYSPC) and everything! Nice to see they're taking this stuff seriously. Though, it would be even more impressive if the alerts were actually useful. :-) To test them out, I left myself some comments and messages, curious to see what would arrive on my phone, and got this:

From: 697724
New Message on MySpace from Russell Beattie. Log in & check it out! Reply STOP to end new message alerts

(The message for blog comments changed only slightly in that it said "New blog comment" instead.)

Hmm. So not particularly user friendly right now... I mean, the obvious question is, "Log in to what!?" since I was reading the message on my phone, and MySpace doesn't have a mobile web version that I know of yet. Obviously they've rolled this SMS cart out a bit before the WAP horse is ready. :-) But I'm sure they're working on it.

Very cool - I think it's great I got to see this service right away - it should be interesting to see it evolve. Can a shitload of money, a deal with a hot MVNO and a parent company with deep international (albeit generally fascist) roots get MySpace up to speed quickly in mobile? And what will be the uptake of their users, considering their demographics? Yes, I work for a competitor of theirs, but I'm just excited to see a new mobile service in general - it's going to help spur the entire industry along. It's definitely going to be fun to see what happens over the next year as these services start rolling out.

-Russ