TextMarks, which launches today, is an interesting startup founded by Ariel Poler and Dan Kamins which plans to make information accessible through cell phones by letting anyone setup an alert, message, or automated text-grabber.
The idea behind TextMarks is to really get publishers and people with cellphones interested in putting out and receiving information. We all have heard of ‘SMS x to 123 to get this song’ type services, and TextMarks wants to broaden not only the choice of information for the user, but the publishers – for example, bloggers can now setup such alert services, have people pay for them, and keep a chunk of the revenue.
Setting up is easy. Select what you want to do — whether it is to reply with a specified block of text, text from a webpage, or create an alert people can subscribe to, then select your keyword, and you’re done. Now, users in the US can SMS your keyword to 41411 and receive what you’ve setup for them. If you’re a blogger, you can add a price to your alert and integrate a widget to your blog to promote it — oh, did I mention — keep a share of the earnings as well.
TextMarks is an interesting service with a bunch of credible names behind it. As information of all kinds is made easier to access for users, TextMarks is just one of those service which wants to take part in the change. I think it’s exciting as well, as this is the first time such a platform and service has been made available to the average user. I really think we will be hearing more of it in the future.
