Widgets are awesome, especially on mobile where a simple UI is essential. These mini-applications (e.g. Zumobi, Widsets, Snipperoo, and Bluepulse) are an easy way to aggregate content and access it on the fly. They are also a great way to rack up your phone bill if you don’t have unlimited data. This means they are pretty off-limits to youth on a family plan where big bills mean big trouble.
Enter SmartTouch Mobile, a new widget platform introduced at Techcrunch 50 that could be the answer for youth. It harnesses the platform that they use most (SMS) to deliver the one they use least (mobile web).
SmartTouch users have access to content and services from the brands they know and trust across a diverse set of categories including, search, banking, directions, social networking, shopping, food ordering and more. There are no short codes or commands to remember and no syntax rules to follow. Simple iPod-like menus minimize keystrokes and let the user send & receive exactly the information they want to, quickly and efficiently.
The service essentially lets you bypass data charges and “skip the toll.” For brands, this takes care of the “addressable audience” problem (i.e. people they can reach on the medium.) It also enables mobile purchasing and transactions from its partners, which include Chase, Papa John’s, Amazon, Facebook, MySpace, Pizza Hut and KISS FM.
There are lots of mobile “app stores” opening up–Apple, T-mobile, Android, and now Blackberry–making off-deck content a lot easier to get. Could SMS-based platforms like SmartTouch become app stores for the data-deprived demo? Or will WAP get cheap enough for them to use without getting grounded?
