MEF Americas 2011: ‘App to person’ messaging is the long-tail for SMS

Whilst much of the discussion at MEF Americas 2011 concerned mobile apps and the usual challenges for developers of addressing multiple platforms, there was an interesting panel session which reminded me that SMS is completely cross platform and available to all ‘out of the box’. As obvious as this sounds, I’d missed the implication which John Orlando of Sixth Sense Media outlines in this video – that the long-term future for SMS (as person to person messaging moves to social networks) is ‘application to person’ messaging.

John’s focus is primarily marketing, but the point stands in a wider context too. I’ve written about this and cited some examples of effective ‘application to me’ SMS use over the last month in a post at Tribal Labs: SMS: The ultimate cross-platform mobile app.