Here is a new service that promises to make sending and receiving text messages free, and that includes international texting. It's called mjoy and is a product of German based, Venista Group. I tried the service and it works and is free, although there are some limitations. Your SMS are free because they are sent from a mobile (or PC) web interface. So they are only "free" if you have an unlimited data plan or stay within the limits of your data bundle.
Here's how it works:
1. Sign up at mjoy.com using your mobile or PC browser. Initial registration asks for your country and mobile phone number.
2. You will receive a text with a special sign up URL, open it in your mobile browser and complete the registration process by choosing an ID and password.
3. Send your texts from within the mjoy mobile web app (2nd image). The person who receives the text will see that it came from your mobile number. A message reading "Text for FREE with http://mjoy.com" is appended to every message.
4. If the recipient replies to the message in the normal way, by hitting "Reply" in their phone's inbox, replying won't be free for them and if you pay for incoming messages it won't be free for you to receive either.
5. If you convince your friends to sign up for mjoy then you can text with them for free using the mobile web. Messages sent to mjoy members end up in their inbox in the mjoy web app (3rd image) rather than in the phone's SMS inbox. Web based mjoy messages can be of unlimited size and there is a nice threaded messaging interface.
The killer feature of mjoy is obviously being able to send texts for free to almost anywhere in the world. mjoy is available in about 180 countries from Afganistan to Zimbabwe including the US, Canada, all of Europe, India, China, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and even Cuba. The only country I noticed as missing was North Korea.
None of this is exactly new; GizmoSMS, text4Free and txtDrop all offer similar services, but only from a "full web" site rather than a mobile one, although these sites are usable in mobile full web browsers like Opera Mini or mobile Safari. mjoy's most direct competitor is probably the well established social network Wadja which lets members send texts for free to any number from the Wadja mobile web site.
mjoy has a nice clean texting-focused user interface, although it doesn't seem quite finiished yet. You are supposed to be able to add your contacts to mjoy so that you don't have to key their phone numbers every time. However, I get the message "Addressb.book service temporarily not available" when I try to use it.
I'm never completely comfortable giving my mobile numbers to new web services like mjoy. There's always the fear that I'll end up being bombarded with unwanted messages, possibly even premium
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posted by Dennis Bournique
November 26, 2008 @ 1:24 pm
7 View Comments
