As part of an update to its alerts feature, Yahoo added a feature that allows users to get RSS results via SMS. The free service will send a message to your phone with every new item posted to an RSS feed. The feature works with any RSS feed, but is likely most useful for feeds used to connect small groups of people (group projects, clubs, etc) where volume will be lower than on a news site.
Since normal text messaging fees apply (though there is no fee from Yahoo) make sure to use this feature wisely.
[via Russell Beattie]
Imagine the phone of the man who is using to read RSS with hundreds of feeds per day :)
Xen: Not sure about the business model, but maybe it's just to get people to use Yahoo more? There isn't much space in a 160 character SMS for an ad.
Eugene: Wow that would be crazy! It would always be beeping.
I agree with you guys. I wouldn't want to receive an alert each time a feed gets updated. However, I think there's a great value for those who want to be notified immediately when something important (to that person) happens. This raises a question of "controlling" the information flow. You need to be able to define which entry in the RSS feed is important enough to send you an SMS alert.
A few months back I wrote a web application (zaptxt.com) that allows me to filter RSS feeds and schedule alerts. I am able to specify, for example, that I only want alerts when a certain word/phrase appears in the title and only between 8AM and 10PM. My goal was to make sure to get only the most important SMS alerts. Another concern I had was that I wanted to be sure that I can easily turn off my alerts, even if I was not at the computer. Imagine you're on the road somewhere and your phone beeps constantly. So, I also added a few SMS commands, one of which allows me to turn all (or one) alerts off from my cell.
eduard
zaptxt.com
It would be interesting to know what is the business model of Yahoo, or in other words, how is Yahoo going to profit from this new free service? or at least, compensate for their operational costs?
This raises another question: what about the operators which provide terminate the transfer of the SMS? Are they working for free as well?! And to complicate things a little more – how are the operators would cope with international models when transmitting these RSS alerts to roamers? subscribers which are abroad?