Tuesday, May 6, 2008

rmbrME: SMS-Enabled Social Networking to Save New Contacts

SMS is sort of a universal underpinning of mobile communications all over the globe. People are able to do everything from chat to purchase goods to transfer cash to one another in a kind of wireless, Western Union-like method, all by way of the very basic but supremely useful medium known as the text message.


So when we received word of a new social Web service built with SMS very much in mind, we naturally grew interested. The startup, launched today, is called rmbrME. (“Remember me.”)


It works quite easily. Users can direct their browsers to the company’s homepage, sign up for an account, input things like address and phone information as well as any number of website URLs or links to social networking profiles at services like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. Once that data is entered, and you happen to meet someone while away from your PC, and wish to stay in contact with the individual, you can send that person a text message directing them to your rmbrME connections. Of course, in standard six-character SMS fashion, rmbrME users need only the numerical translation of the service - 762763 - to establish their desired connections.


Creating an account for rmbrME is free, and requires only the essentials: a mobile phone number, an email address, and password. Naturally, SMS messages sent and received through rmbrME vary in cost, depending one’s mobile service plan.


So rather than having to retain the name, phone number and perhaps email by navigating your phone’s address menu and so forth, and later using that information to search for social network profiles on the Web, all necessary work is basically completed in the time it takes to write and send a short text message. Quite convenient, particularly for the majority of mobile phone users who don’t subscribe to costly a mobile Web browsing service from their chosen carriers and own non-QWERTY handsets that require tedious typing to accomplish extensive SMS communications.

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