Mobile messaging experts Bubble Motion has announced a new social network based around its voice messaging platform. Called “Bubbly” it combines mobile social networking with voice messaging to create a “Voice-Blog” service.
How does it work?
Voice-blogging is ideally suited to the mobile platform. It’s already an internet-connected microphone, after all. The idea behind Bubbly is that it should be a voice-based Twitter. Let’s have a look:
The service is currently live in Asia, where it was originally tested and launched. As a result, its aimed at lower-spec phones than your regular smartphone. The service runs on shortcodes and SMS. When you want to record a message (or “bubble”), you dial a shortcode and speak your thoughts. Bubble Motion then sends SMS to everyone who is following you, notifying them that you have a new recording. That SMS also contains the instructions that person needs to listen to your bubble. If you want to follow someone, you simply dial the shortcode and include their mobile number after it.
What we think?
There are some things that aren’t made clear in the press release – for instance, how do you find people to follow? Do you need to know their number already? There’s a function that allows you to mask your number to prevent followers from calling you directly… which implies that you don’t need to know someones phone number to follow them.
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Hi Cian,
My name is Dave and I’m the VP of Product at Bubble Motion. I saw your coverage and wanted to follow up on the question about how people find others to follow.
In the case where someone is following a friend or family member, there is a simple command (specifically *p-h-o-n-e-n-u-m-b-e-r*). In the case of following someone more famous, there is a “short code” which allows the celebrity to mask their actual phone number. Think of this as like a ‘tiny URL’ but for a phone. In that case the follow command would be *67724* (*o-p-r-a-h*).
As for the discovery process of finding out about who’s fun to follow, much of this will happen as people get creative about promoting themselves. Ultimately we aim to publish lists and directories of who’s popular, and make those browsable on the Web.
Thanks for your interest in Bubbly, and covering this release for your readers.
Bubbly sounds twittering voice messages. Very cool ! SVMS as voice blog is new strategy and quite interesting. If twitter is now a tool for businesses in their marketing strategy, then maybe somehow (I am thinking how) bubbly will be of good use by advertisers too? And how much will it cost? Would it be cheaper or should I say a free service like twitter too? I am not sure if this will hit the market in South East Asian nations like Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and 8 others.