Cure for the message bored

Those text messages that kept attendees of CTIA's Wireless IT & Entertainment show in October up to speed on all the best Las Vegas social engagements were not just shameless self-promotion. Well, as far from shameless as you can expect in Vegas, anyway — but at least the messages were promoting a unique application and technology platform rather than just the companies hosting the parties.

The CTIA messaging campaign was essentially a showcase for the capabilities of Upoc, the de facto leader of the mobile community movement. Through its ties to mobile networks and its one-to-many delivery platform, Upoc can help consumers connect with common interest groups, help marketers target their messages at the right audiences and — perhaps most important — help carriers add more lucrative traffic to their networks.

How does Upoc serve those different constituencies? For its mass consumer audience, www.upoc.com is the catalyst. Visitors can search for communities of interest (politics, sports, music, Britney Spears, etc.), sign up and immediately start swapping short text messages with wireless strangers who share their interests.

Anonymous participation sets Upoc apart, said Greg Clayman, a Upoc co-founder and its VP of marketing. “We built a system that allows you to send messages without knowing someone else's number,” Clayman said. “The anonymity of it is very powerful.”

So powerful, Clayman said, that Upoc has users who get more than 800 messages a day sent to their wireless phones. “On purpose,” he quickly added, because the opt-in requirement of Upoc's communities is as important as the anonymity factor. “We call them to check and see if that's what they really want, and they love it.”

Sometimes, however — and then only at users' discretion — the anonymity factor is eliminated. “A number of people have met and gotten married over Upoc,” said Alex LeVine, another co-founder and Upoc's VP of operations and carrier relations.

As for marketers that want to push their messages via mobile, Upoc's customer list includes Hollywood studios like Universal and Sony; record labels like Warner Bros., Capital, Def Jam, Columbia and Virgin; and even consumer product manufacturers like Nestle and Mazda. Upoc's services range from helping them forge a mobile marketing plan to hosting and delivering their messaging.

For Geffen Records' band Puddle of Mudd, for example, Upoc teamed with Verizon Wireless (which is sponsoring the band's tour) to deliver fans concert alerts, free tickets and user chats. Clayman said Upoc plans to begin offering these “mobile fan clubs” as premium content — a lucrative proposition, given that rapper Lil' Bow Wow's Upoc fan group alone counts 60,000 users.

Still, Upoc's relationship with carriers is at the crux of everything it does. The company can create private label services for operators, as it recently did with an Alltel promotion spotlighting Nascar driver Ryan Newman. The carrier is one of Newman's corporate sponsors and sends fans regular updates on his activities. After Newman blew out a tire during a race in April, Alltel even sent subscribers a personal voice mail from the driver himself to assure fans that the accident left him unscathed.

“That type of personal relationship is something that Alltel has enabled, and it puts them in a positive light,” Clayman said. “Putting together programs like this convinces people to sign up for data services.”

And as competitive differentiators go, Upoc's most important is its direct tie-in to several major carriers' short message service centers, which gives the company a built-in relationship with service providers. “We started early so we have an advantage,” Clayman said. “I'd never say our position couldn't be eroded, but we're constantly reworking — we're not just sitting back.”

We get the message.