Send SMS & MMS messages from Facebook, thanks to Vodafone

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 09 September 2008 02:42

Your IT - Home IT

Vodafone UK is trialling a service that enables mobile users on any UK network to send text and picture messages from within Facebook to any UK mobile user.

To activate the service users download an application from http://www.vodafone.co.uk/connecttofriends and install it in their Facebook profile. Vodafone is charging 10p per text message ($A0.21) and 30p ($A0.65) for picture messages "for the duration of the trial" (unspecified) but gives 25 text message credits on sign-up.  Users pay in advance via Pay4it, a UK payment system run by several mobile operators, and have 30 days in which to use credits.

The service has been created in conjunction with the Value Creation Centre, a Vodafone joint innovation initiative with IBM, and the Vodafone Internet Services division at Vodafone UK.

Pieter Knook Vodafone Group internet services director, hinted that the service would be rolled out in other countries if successful, saying: "With more than 20 million social network users the UK alone it is the perfect market in which to test a Vodafone service that allows all mobile users to send texts and picture messages via the Facebook experience."