Craigslist for your mobile phone
August 23rd, 2006
The recently launched UK-headquartered Upingme service will let you post a classfied ad from your phone for free. Well, standard texting rates apply, so Upingme might not be as free as it originally appears. The posted ad will appear online at the Upingme website, complete with tags and a “magic number” that will keep the posters anonymity. Other users will have the post texted to their phone, but I’m not sure if they’ll be able to decide which types of posts they’d like to receive. The basic text commands to use the service can be seen here, and an example is shown below.
Honestly, I don’t know why someone would need this service. First, there are already several classified listings already out there, both online (Craigslist, Yahoo classifieds) and offline (pretty much every newspaper there is). Second, do you really need to immediately list your poodle as up for adoption? Can’t you just do it from your home PC? Lastly, Upingme will charge “a very small fee” to those who want to respond to an ad by text over their phone. Well, if you’re in the UK that fee is £1, or $1.89– not quite a gallon of gas, but no “very small fee” either. Both posting and responding to a Craigslist post is free (except for posting help wanted ads in SF, NYC, and Los Angeles, and for broker apartment listings in NYC and Los Angeles). So I ask our readers, and the guys behind Upingme: Why would someone want to use this service?
The recently launched UK-headquartered Upingme service will let you post a classfied ad from your phone for free. Well, standard texting rates apply, so Upingme might not be as free as it originally appears. The posted ad will appear online at the Upingme website, complete with tags and a “magic number” that will keep the posters anonymity. Other users will have the post texted to their phone, but I’m not sure if they’ll be able to decide which types of posts they’d like to receive. The basic text commands to use the service can be seen here, and an example is shown below.
Honestly, I don’t know why someone would need this service. First, there are already several classified listings already out there, both online (Craigslist, Yahoo classifieds) and offline (pretty much every newspaper there is). Second, do you really need to immediately list your poodle as up for adoption? Can’t you just do it from your home PC? Lastly, Upingme will charge “a very small fee” to those who want to respond to an ad by text over their phone. Well, if you’re in the UK that fee is £1, or $1.89– not quite a gallon of gas, but no “very small fee” either. Both posting and responding to a Craigslist post is free (except for posting help wanted ads in SF, NYC, and Los Angeles, and for broker apartment listings in NYC and Los Angeles). So I ask our readers, and the guys behind Upingme: Why would someone want to use this service?
