I’m writing to let you know that Padpaw is shutting down.
Padpaw was a great service but the marketing requirements were beyond our bootstrap budget. Alison and Jeff put in a valiant effort developing the site and keeping it running which I’m eternally grateful. For those of you that have seen/heard me talk about Padpaw, it delivered a lot of its service using text messaging. It’s evident that with more people in the US market using iPhone/Android, cheaper ways to alert people are now available (my forecast: 2011 will see most US consumers using smart phones. Primary reason is economy improving pushing phone upgrades).
I’d like to thank you all for the ideas, leads, and support you’ve given me and my team. I’ll be spending the rest of the summer looking for new opportunities and trying to figure out the Next Big Thing (tm). I’ll also be working on a new idea for MobileCampBoston - more on that when it’s in the oven. Since my calendar is amazing clear for the foreseeable future, feel free to call me if you want to talk/meet on what I’ve learned.
Best Regards…..Keith Erskine
It’s hard to get anyone to pay 3-cents on something that is comparable to tap water. Text messages, like your water bill, are a line item on your cell phone bill you don’t think about. Once payed, you can send as many as you want. My kids will send upwards to 1,000 messages a month and their friends consider them lightweights.
One of the hardest lessons in running Padpaw is that people won’t pay for something that they perceive is already paid. The amount of value you have to provide for that 3-cent extra has to significant. Now that everyone has a texting plan built in, that window for business has closed.
So what do you do if you need a free mobile messaging system for your solution? Email-to-SMS doesn’t work in the long run. I propose getting someone else to pay for it (like Twitter).
More later…
Padpaw originally had a shortcode (74685) and a working relationship with the cell phone carriers through an aggregator (mBlox). While it offered us a lot of flexibility in delivering services, it was expensive to run. I found an alternative service, but it would cost 3-cents for every message sent AND received. For your group, this could get expensive. Many of you anticipated this and suggested the feature for just sending messages to members that have RSVP’d to a Meetup. While possible, I wanted to come up with solution you and other Meetup groups could use now.
This brings me to Twitter. Twitter has always had an SMS (text messaging) capability that is free to use (your standard texting rates still apply).
Some questions:
- Do you use Twitter?
- Do people in your group use Twitter?
- Have you set up a Twitter account for your Meetup group?
I’ve done some work to create a service that would check a Twitter account for direct messages, and then “retweet” them to the timeline. The account can be made private so no one will see messages posted unless the account follows the member. Members can easily turn messaging on and off from their phones. It’s not as easy to set up, but it’s free for everyone (you, your members, and me (service provider)).
Let me know what you think info@padpaw.net
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What do I mean by retooling? Basically we’re changing the way we do text messaging and changing the way we deliver our service.
We’ve decided to shutdown our shortcode and aggregator arrangement because the costs of keeping both them active didn’t make sense for our business. Also, having to use keyword commands to support a lot of groups makes our text UI hard to use. If someone gets a text message, they just want to write a reply and not have to remember to put a “post groupname” in front.
Luckily we’ve identified another solution that will fit our bootstrap budget and make it easier for groups to interact. We’ll make an announcement when it’s ready for you to test.
Secondly, we’re going to work on different approaches to making groups more organized when they’re mobile. We’ve found that there’s a lot of different ways to reach new groups without them needing to sign up for an entirely new service. Our integration with Meetup was one example and we’ll be delivering a new service tailored just for Meetup organizers.
