Sprint launch emotional messaging service with Fun Text
US operator and Emotional Messaging specialist to provide customers with simple on device rich-media messaging
4th June 2008: The launch on Sprint of a new rich media service provided by emotional messaging specialist Fun Text was announced today. The new service allows Sprint customers to easily insert professionally created rich-media directly into text messages for emotional expression, straight from their handset.
The service will initially be available on 20 handsets out of the Sprint range, opening Fun Text up to 8m out of the operator's 52m-strong subscriber-base, a figure which is expected to grow rapidly. Sprint, a pioneer of user-generated multimedia messaging through their photo-messaging offering in the US, already has the highest volume of traffic of any US operator at over 200 million photo-messages a month.
The application will initially be available for download from a new category on the Sprint Vision portal. The cross-network service will offer true MMS pay-per-message options as well as an innovative unlimited MMS package for just $3.99 per month.
By downloading the application to their handset, users can quickly and easily insert a range of professionally created content into their messages to underline and express emotional statements. The on-device portal connects to an actively merchandised content store with videos, animations, audio clips and static images relevant to the time of day, date and season.
Richard Harris, from Fun Text commented, "Fun Text really opens up the category of emotional messaging by allowing people to express their emotions in a colourful way, letting multimedia do the talking when it comes to saying things like ‘I love you’ or ‘I miss you’."
"Fun Text creates a new category of everyday mass-market mobile messaging giving people more reasons to send MMS. By bringing together the benefits of multimedia messaging with the ease of use and broad appeal of text messaging Fun Text allows users to enhance their messages with great content specially design for social expression."
The Fun Text service is available on a variety of Samsung, Motorola, LG and Sanyo devices on Sprint from today.
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For more information:
Patrick Herridge
Parys Communications
0207 622 9951
About Fun Text
Fun Text is a new mobile messaging service that enables users to quickly and easily add rich media to their text messages for emotional expression. Users can add Fun Text images to their messages through an online content store integrated into the handset's messaging menu structure.Fun Text combines the richness of MMS with the ease of use of SMS.
Fun Text represents a new category of messaging in-between user-generated photo-messaging and SMS – 'emotional messaging' where users can deploy professionally created content within messages to clearly express emotional statements. MMS is generally used occasionally for sending camera phone pictures and SMS is used regularly for brief, 'functional' statements – Fun Text creates a new, high traffic, emotional communication medium as an alternative to both.
Fun Text drives MMS traffic, leveraging historic infrastructure investments for operators. The 'emotional messaging' category gives users new contact opportunities, driving traffic over existing MMS infrastructure. Trials of the Fun Text handset application suggest it can drive an MMS uplift of around 50%.
Fun Text is being adopted by some of the world's leading operators. It already powers portal-based messaging for operators like 3, T-Mobile O2 and Sprint, it is soon to be launched as a handset-based application on a series of major operators. Fun Text is a proven technology and consumer proposition that has demonstrated significant revenue uplift for operators.