Mozes: Broadcast Text Messaging in a Few Clicks

Ajit and Erin’s recent posts about creative uses of text messaging got me thinking about Mozes, a cool texting product I played around with a few months back. In brief, Mozes allows you to create a free account and then register the keywords of your choice. People who send a text message to 66937 (MOZES) with your keyword as the message will get back a custom message of your choosing. In addition, you can use Mozes to encourage users to subscribe to your keyword and you can then send out broadcast messages to all your subscribers whenever you want.

So, I set up an account and registered the keyword “ajitmusic” as an experiment. Ajit is a friend and colleague here at Bivings and, more importantly, a talented musician who plays gigs around DC. Check out his website. Plug. Plug. Plug. Text the message “ajitmusic” to 66937 and you’ll get back a custom message and also an invitation to subscribe to broadcast messages from Ajit (or me I guess – ). Give it a whirl.

I think this is a pretty cool deal. When I first looked at Mozes a few months back I remember being slightly overwhelmed. There are millions of uses for this kind of technology, both personal and professional. Here are the first five potential uses that popped into my head:

(1) Mozes is already being used by bands to promote upcoming gigs and keep in touch with fans.

(2) People with social calendars busier than mine could use Mozes to let friends know which bars, clubs or restaurants they will be at on a given night. Or to send out broadcast messages to try to organize a last minute outing. Or to simply let friends and family know what they’ve been up to.

(3) Political candidates could use the service to quickly promote hastily scheduled television appearances or events, where you can’t count on emails being timely enough to get the message out to folks.

(4) Teachers could use Mozes to keep students informed about changing class schedules or adjustments to assignments.

(5) Restaurants could use the service to let users know about the day’s specials or to simply inform people how long the wait is on a given night. Give Mozes a try. It is worth a look. Note that Mozes is in Beta currently and there is a cap on the number of text messages you can send per keyword (1,000).

And don’t forget to text the message “ajitmusic” to 66937