By: Chris Brubaker

In this two part series, I’m going to talk about two key problems in the SMS (text messaging) industry affecting growth and innovation; spam and shady business practices.

Spam

Let’s first start out with some numbers. In 2006, 800 million spam text messages were sent, in 2007 that number increased to 1.1 billion and is expected to reach 1.5 billion this year. That calculates out to six unsolicited text messages per cell phone user in the US. The worst part is, it’s not an even distribution, some users get no spam and others a ton.

Obviously, service providers have it in their best interest to block spam messages, especially with messaging rates at $0.15 per message. Verizon reports that it blocks over 200 million spam messages a month (A MONTH!), at current rates that saves consumers $30 million in would be text messages. Without some kind of a text-messaging plan, spam messages can hurt your pocket book. As carriers increase messaging prices, every bit of spam hurts the text messaging industry that much more (turning consumers off to the technology).

Privacy

Text spam also affects companies looking to add SMS functionality to their product line because of increased privacy concerns. For example, HouseFront created the real estate industries first SMS property search (text any address to ‘HOUSE’ or 46873). HouseFront never sends unsolicited messages, and never sells or gives out user’s information. Consumers who have experienced spam are weary of trying new texting services, and offering up their cell phone number. The less spam consumers receive the more emphasis you can expect to see on services like HouseFront’s.

To view safe, spam free text messaging services check out our Text Thursday Blog, offering up great companies that provide SMS services (like ours) free of charge.

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