incommunicado

The devastating floods in Pakistan have been covered by trained reporters and mainstream media outlets around the world. Citizens, often on the front lines of the flood, have also been contributing thousands of reports though mobile phones, in part enabled by the citizen journalism service SeenReport.

SeenReport (from “see ‘n report”) is a citizen journalism service through which users can submit photos, videos, and text accounts of news as it is happening via SMS, MMS, or e-mail. SeenReport won a 2010 mBillionth award, a first-ever contest which recognizes mobile content in South Asia. A YouTube video explains more about the service.

The SeenReport platform is designed to augment stories on online news sites. The platform has been purchased and customized by other media organizations in Pakistan, which helps to both promote citizen journalism in the country and to create a revenue stream for SeenReport.

MobileActive.org talked with Sharjeel Qureshi, a founder of the service. Here is what we learned about SeenReport and citizen journalism in Pakistan.

How does SeenReport work?

A citizen reporter captures an event on a mobile phone and sends the content to SeenReport. There is no manual intervention at this stage - the content is automatically published on the SeenReport website to better ensure real-time reports which augment larger ongoing events. Further, citizen reporters can register personal information on the site after submitting material.

The system accepts content via SMS, MMS, and e-mail. If images or photos are sent, some basic text is required as far as description and location. The SeenReport platform is intelligent enough to detect this text and suggest related content and news stories. So, if several citizen reporters are submitting reports from the same event on their mobiles - the floods, for instance - the system will make a single thread from the incoming reports.

Some users create detailed online profiles. One freelance journalist, for example, includes his picture, email address, phone number, professional membership affiliation, and has established a subdomain on the SeenReport site with tabs for all of his uploaded content. Qureshi refers to it as a version of LinkedIn for freelance journalists. Others can post anonymously if they choose and are not required to create complete profiles.

The service has been integrated with social network sites so that when stories are published on the website, they are automatically posted on Twitter and Facebook for SeenReport. If a citizen journalist registers personal social media accounts, their reports will be automatically posted in those locations, too.

In general, mobile citizen reports open the door to spam, offensive content, and potentially non-newsworthy posts. SeenReport deals with this through a self-policing or "social censoring" system. Whenever content is posted, readers can comment on it, rate it, and flag it if they find it offensive. SeenReport administrators then remove the flagged content. This topic has been an ongoing discussion for the group behind SeenReport: the idea of how news stories are authenticated, how best to integrate citizen journalism into mainstream media, and what is good journalism.

A strong initial boost

Qureshi and his team began working on the SeenReport platform in 2007, at a time when there was a media blackout in Pakistan. Heavy censorship was imposed on media organizations at the time. The Internet was the only free medium of information, Qureshi said. During this time, the mobile market in Pakistan had proliferated and “we thought it would be a great idea to empower people to report news right from the cell phone and broadcast to the world in real-time,” he said.

When the site was launched in April 2008, it came on the heels of Pakistan’s Long March, the social unrest following firings of the judiciary. During this time, media coverage was heavily censored. SeenReport, Qureshi said, provided an alternative medium to cover the scale of the event and enable citizens at home to witness the historical moment.

SeenReport allows every mobile user in the crowd to become a reporter. In terms of the Long March, SMS reports provided minute-by-minute and mile-by-mile updates from eyewitnesses. The role of SeenReport in the march was a boost to the fledgling service and was covered by many international news outlets, including Global Voices, the BBC, and CIO Pakistan.

SeenReport is more than a single "people powered news" site

The SeenReport software, a cloud-based, open-source technology, was created in-house by a small team of engineers. SeenReport also sells this software-as-a-service to other media organizations interested in developing their own citizen journalism initiatives.

This software provision helps to generate income: the monthly recurring license fee model for adopters is the most significant source of revenue for the “modestly funded start-up,” Qureshi said.  

SeenReport was designed in such a way that it can be adapted and customized by other users. Several news and media sites have purchased the platform, including Samaa, GeoDost, Aaj, and PlayTv. The first three use the technology for citizen journalism purposes while PlayTv, an entertainment and music channel for youth in Pakistan, uses it to engage young viewers through mobile interaction.

Because organizations have their own policies for driving citizen journalism, adopters can customize the functionality and tweak the editorial control. Some sites, for example, require a thorough review of content before it is published, unlike SeenReport’s system of instant posts and social censorship.

By providing the software to others, SeenReport contributes to citizen journalism in Pakistan. Across the spectrum of organizations using the platform, there have been over 10,000 news reports relating to the floods. GeoDost, for example, has established a unique section on the main page for natural disasters and an "initial flood portal". More than 500,000 citizen reports have been submitted by all users  across all organizations, Qureshi said, which gives “an idea of how strong citizen journalism is in Pakistan.”

Today's Mobile Minute brings you news on the state of the mobile web, California's plan to be the first state with a mass mobile alert system, Cisco's (rumored) move to buy Skype, a guide to installing PercentMobile on different platforms, and results from a study on the effects of SMS reminders for taking birth control pills. 

• Opera recently released its newest State of the Mobile Web report (covering July 2010). The report analyzes how people around the world are accessing the mobile web; for example, South Africa had the highest number of female mobile web users (43.5%) while India had the lowest (4.0%). Since July of 2009 the number of mobile web users has increased by 114.3%, and the highest concentration of under-18 mobile web users are in Vietnam and Ukraine. 

• California will be the first state in America to have a government-run emergency mobile alert system when it launches a pilot program this fall. The commercial "Mobile Alert System" was announced last week, and will be piloted in San Diego county before rolling out to be state-wide. 

• TechCruch reports that "Cisco has made an offer to acquire Skype before they complete their IPO process," although this news has yet to be confirmed. 

• Mobile Analytics Simplified posted a run down on how to install PercentMobile (a mobile analytics service) on several popular platforms, including Python, Django, ASP.NET, Java, and node.js.

• A study published by Obstetrics and Gynecology found that daily SMS reminders had no effect on helping a sample group of women remember to take their birth control pills. The report states, "Daily text message reminders did not help the 82 women in the study become more adherent to their birth control pill regimen. Both the text-receiving participants and the control group missed about 5 pills per month."

[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]

Image courtesy Flickr user QiFei

One of the the key functions of mobile phones is their use in data collection. We have seen lots of online discussion here at MobileActive.org and elsewhere on the subject.

Here, we feature a peer-reviewed journal article from our growing list of resources on mobile data collection. In this 2009 paper, Ping et al. evaluated the effectiveness of PDA-based questionnaire verses a paper-based method for public health surveillance in Fiji.

The authors showed that the gains in data accuracy using PDA technology were due to software that can automatically check for inconsistencies, missing values and skip logic at the time of data collection. But most impressive is their comparison of cost and time savings at each stage of project implementation – pre-deployment, data collection, and data entry, validation and cleaning stage. Though, there are some limitations in their study design (described in the slidecast), this paper is a good example of some parameters that should be captured in evaluations of mobile data collection projects.

Citation: Yu, P. et al. (2009). The development and evaluation of a PDA-based method for public health surveillance data collection in developing countries, Int. J. Med. Inform. 78(8):532-42

New Mobile Data Resource Coming Soon!

Recently, we collaborated with UN Global Pulse to crowd source mobile data collection deployments around the world. The inventory can be accessed here: http://bit.ly/mobdatainventory. To supplement this inventory, we are collecting all literature relevant to evaluations of mobile data collection projects and will soon share this (giant) round-up of blog posts, peer-reviewed research, evaluations and technical reports, case studies and How-Tos. We hope this compilation of resources will directly inform practitioners, who are looking to set up similar field projects.

Some Early Observations of the Existing Literature

Of the literature that exists, much of it does not adequately discuss evaluative metrics for mobiles in data collection projects. Comprehensive evaluation and monitoring of pilots is important in order for practitioners to understand the value-add of mobiles and feasibility of scale-up. The majority of evaluations we have seen that are focused on mobiles in data collection, report on savings in costs and time but do not break down these savings in detail.  Additionally, the discussion on effectiveness of mobiles is largely qualitative. Interviews and user perceptions are very useful for understanding local contexts and usability of technology. But to convince organizations to adopt mobile technology in their work, quantitative metrics should be presented as well.

Listed below are some parameters that could be measured. This list is not exhaustive, but a reflection of the taxonomy used in existing literature that should be built on:

• reach of target group (as compared to existing methods)
• usability and user perceptions (data collectors, participants, managers etc.)
• effect on management of staff (e.g. productivity)
• accuracy and quality of data collected (compared to existing methods)
• ease and extent of data capture (compared to other methods)
• effect on work flow management
• time and costs of training (initial and on-going, in-person support, and other resources)
• initial purchasing costs of technology and on-going (estimated) costs
• costs associated with evaluation and/or development of technology
• ease and cost of data transmission (based on network connectivity etc.)
• level of participation and user-input
• data security and protection (increasing a concern with data collection projects for health)
• localization/customization/adaptability of software/hardware
• technical capacity (pre-deployment and on-going)

Including the above, longer term evaluations, should also assess how mobile data collection efforts have improved the deliverables of the project, informed policy, or increased public awareness. A more standardized (or to start, a more comprehensive) approach for the monitoring and evaluation could better inform practitioners of region-specific best practices, lessons learned, barriers and challenges that may arise.

[NEW EVENTS ADDED] After a slow August, September is bursting with events. Mark your calendars, there's something for everyone this month! And, as always - if you know of other events of note for this community, please add them in the comments!

Our Events:

23 September, Women and Mobile Tech Salon (New York, NY, USA) MobileActive is hosting a tech salon this month to discuss mobile tech and the particular needs of women to improve their lives, health, and economic status.

We will have short talks by women leaders in the mobile tech-for-social-change field. Register here!

Other Events:

8-9 September, 2nd International mHealth Networking Conference (San Diego, CA, USA) This event brings together mHealth practitioners from around the world to discuss their projects. The panel discussions this year focus on many different aspects of mHealth (from using mobiles for data collection, to developing mobile medical reminders, to developing diagnostic applications) with presentations of specific case studies. 

9-14 September, IBC Conference (Amsterdam, Netherlands) IBC 2010 is a conference for media professionals (from both the entertainment and news sides) to discuss the state of the industry. The year, one of the major themes will be new technology - including mobiles - and how things like mobile apps can be incorporated into media strategies. 

[NEW] 10-11 September, Over The Air (London, U.K.) Over The Air is a "free developer event and hack-a-thon that [...] seeks to inform, energise and empower mobile "builders" to work with each other to create great stuff. Over the Air is a place where developers, designers, enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and academics can come together to celebrate, discuss, learn, chill and geek out for 24 hours of intense fun."

13-14 September, AppNation (San Francisco, CA, USA) AppNation is an entrepreneurial-focused conference for people interested in developing and monetizing apps. 

20-21 September, Mobile 2.0 (Silicon Valley, CA, USA) Mobile 2.0 covers mobile applications and services, mobile ecosystems, and disruptive mobile innovation while also discussing how to create business models and monetize mobile services.

20-24 September, Design for Mobile (Chicago, Il, USA) This three-day event "is a conference focused on strategy and tactics for user research, product definition, usability testing, interaction and design" in mobiles. The event highlights the importance of creating highly usable designs to improve users' mobile experiences.  

[NEW] 21 September, ICT4D: Innovation & the Millennium Development Goals (New York, NY, USA) This tech salon brings together practitioners using ICT4D around the world to achieve millennium development goals. This event is part of the UN Week Digital Media Lounge. 

21-23 September, Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting (New York, NY, USA) This year's Clinton Global Initiative will focus on four themes: "Empowering Girls and Women, Strengthening Market-Based Solutions, Embracing Access to Modern Technology, and Harnessing Human Potential."

27-28 September, Mobile Monday Summit 2010 (Helsinki, Finland and Tallinn, Estonia) The 10-year anniversary celebration of Mobile Mondays spans two cities for a three-day event. In addition to speakers presenting their work with mobiles, the event also highlights Nokia, Skype and Fortumo as examples of Finnish and Estonian mobile industry success.  

[NEW] 27-28 September, Mobile Giving Conference (Malibu, California, USA) The Innovative Giving Foundation and MobileCause announced a "mobile giving conference dedicated to helping non-profits understand, utilize, communicate, and raise funds through the emerging mobile giving marketplace while integrating with traditional already proven and other innovative fundraising solutions." If you register with the code "MC-IGF," you get half-priced admission and a free month of access to MobileCause. 

28 - 1 September/October, Mobile Web in Africa 2010 (Johannesburg, South Africa) Mobile Web in Africa covers the expanding field for mobile developers in Africa. The event is held in a roundtable format so that developers and techies can easily talk with and learn from each other, as the event covers where the industry is and where it can go - and what that means for the African tech community.

Image via Flickr user James Nash

 

The Mobile Minute is back with the latest mobile news. What's happening today? FrontlineSMS now supports MMS via email and offers scheduling features, an infographic breaks down the overlap between social networks and mobile phones, non-profits are ramping up their use of mobile giving campaigns, and Google introduces a new computer-to-phone voice service.

• FrontlineSMS released a new version of its software, which now supports multi-media messages (MMS) The new version also has a scheduling feature called "Reminders" for managing emails and SMSs.

• "The Geosocial Universe" is a great infographic that breaks down how (and where) users access different social networks. For example, the majority of Skype's 590 million users access the program from a computer, while Twitter's 114 million users are slightly more likely to log on from a mobile device than a computer, and FourSquare's 3 million users come entirely from mobile devices. 

• Mobile Marketing Watch reports that American non-profits are increasing their use of mobile giving campaigns after the success of mobile donations during the Haitian earthquake and the Gulf oil spill.

• Voice Calls, a new feature released by Google, allows Gmail users to call phones from their computers. Users can make calls to, and receive calls from, phones, and the service is free for calling U.S. and Canadian numbers. 

[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.

Image courtesy Flickr user QiFei

 

The Mobile Minute is here to bring you news about YouTube's new mobile site, 4G wireless networks in Russia, mobile phone ownership growth in North Korea, apps and the future of news journalism, and the New York Times' look at the growth of the web. 

• YouTube recently launched a new version of its mobile site.  Using HTML5, the new version is faster than previous versions and has a touch interface. 

• Yota, a Russian telecom start-up, is building a 4G network as its first project; The Economist reports the company "has built a 4G network from scratch, burying 3,000km (1,864 miles) of fibre-optic cables to connect its wireless base stations," with a $500 million investment. 

• The number of North Koreans with state-approved mobiles is growing steadily. Although areas bordering South Korea allegedly are blocking mobile networks, The Korea Times reports that 60% of North Korean citizens can now access mobile networks, with 185,000 mobile owners reported in June of 2010. 

• The Guardian took a close look at news organizations' failure to capitalize on the app market, and why apps won't save the journalism industry. 

• The New York Times challenged Wired's recent claim that apps are drawing Internet traffic away from the web, by comparing the growth of both apps and web traffic to reveal that many areas of web access are growing along with the app market.

[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.

Image courtesy Flickr user QiFei

Femi Soremekun, managing director of Nigeria-based Biofem Pharmaceuticals, is all too familiar with the fight against counterfeit drugs. In late 2008, a distributor notified him that he suspected that one of Biofem’s products, Glucophage, was being counterfeited. After checking batch and inventory numbers, Soremekun reassured him there was no evidence of such activity. It was only after more allegations surfaced that he sent a sample to French manufacturer Merck & Co. to be analyzed. Turns out the claims were correct. “I was very shocked,” Soremekun says. “[The counterfeiters] got into my market, counterfeited my product, and I wasn’t even aware of it. I was losing sales.”

It was around this time that Soremekun learned about Sproxil, a start-up company that is part of a consortium that includes Nigeria’s pharmaceutical industry association and the country’s regulating agency. The group explores technology-based strategies to tackle drug counterfeiting. On the sidelines of the consortium, Biofem and Sproxil discussed implementing a drug-certification process in order to restore Biofem customers’ confidence in Glucophage. Following a successful five-month trial in Nigeria involving about one million units of Biofem’s product, the company has seen sales pick up again. “We ended up being called the guinea pig,” Soremekun jokes.

A Growing Field

Sproxil, whose mobile authentication service relies on a simple SMS-based technology, is one of a number of players in the mobile health field focusing on drug counterfeiting. Allison Bloch, who has worked with the GSM Association, says that growing competition and development in mobile health in recent years has spurred evolution in the field.

In parallel, a shift in institutional focus towards developing a better understanding of customer psychology in emerging markets is paving the way for bottom-up approaches like SMS-based technology to gain currency. When it comes to tackling a complex problem like drug counterfeiting, companies are showing a keen interest in simple, consumer-focused strategies that can enhance the value and relevance of their products in developing and emerging markets.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags – intelligent barcodes that require the use of electronic readers – are used around the world in supply-chain management, logistics and mobile payments. RFID tags are not well-suited for emerging markets, however, because the technology relies on the existence of a solid tech ecosystem to support it. SMS-based technology, on the other hand, enables pharmaceutical companies and regulating agencies to put a simple and potentially highly effective solution in the hands of the end-user.

While companies like Sproxil are tackling the counterfeiting issue by directly authenticating drugs for pharma companies, other players are taking different approaches. MPedigree, another group in the Nigerian consortium, is working on creating a global standard to address counterfeiting.  According to Bright Simon of mPedigree, mPedigree is a 'social enterprise' that is encouraging the adoption of mobile certification as a viable, long-term solution to drug counterfeiting.

Blister Packs and SMS for Authentication

Alden Zecha, Sproxil’s chief financial officer, is proud of his company’s recent success. “We’ve made significant progress because our core principle is to deliver results, and that’s what we are doing,” he says. Sproxil’s SMS-based Mobile Authentication Service was first deployed during a trial involving Biofem’s drug Glucophage. The trial took place between February and March 2010, with 125 pharmacies in three major Nigerian cities taking part.

Sproxil’s technology relies on the inclusion of a unique PIN on scratch cards in the drug’s packaging. The consumer reveals the PIN on the card and sends an encrypted text message (using a free shortcode) to a cloud computing server. This server then generates an immediate response indicating whether the drug is real or fake.

During the Biofem trial, over 700,000 blister packs of Glucophage were labeled, and 22,638 SMS messages were sent and received by 6,761 unique consumers. The trial showed a 99.9912% cloud authentication system responsiveness, Sproxil says. (Both Biofem and Sproxil declined to share the actual authentication results. Sproxil CEO Ashifi Gogo says “the fear is that [the pharmaceutical companies] are going to pick up tomorrow’s papers and read that x percent of their drugs on the market are fake.”)  To date, Gogo says, his company has labeled over a million blister packs with scratch cards all around Nigeria; the goal is to reach 2.5 million packs by the end of the year.

Gogo and Zecha both indicated they’re involved in negotiations with prospective customers in Africa, as well as in Asia and South America. In these new markets they plan on partnering with much larger companies that already operate there.

Sproxil’s goal is to “generate value that is of interest to pharmaceutical companies as well as regulators,” Gogo says. “It’s business with a large social benefit,” adding that using going the commercial route “is one of the things we did differently: we have more of a traditional business approach, and it’s really paid off.”

Partnerships with Industry

While Sproxil is focused on ensuring safety in the pharmaceutical market by securing new contracts and expanding its customer base, mPedigree is looking to achieve the same result by influencing industry leaders. The firm is working with industry on a way to make mobile certification standard practice. Bright Simons, director of mPedigree, believes an industry-wide effort is necessary to make mobile authentication the solution to thwarting drug counterfeiting.

With this in mind, the company is serving as a bridge between technology innovators and institutional industry players, such as drug companies, governments and regulators. mPedigree is currently working in Nigeria with major pharmaceutical companies like GSK, Sanofi-Aventis and Pfizer. It’s also working with the Nigerian National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control on a framework for making mobile certification a standard service. “Once we resolve certain key questions, a process in which every medicine in Nigeria will bear a code is going to begin,” Simons says.

One of the key questions is related to the cost of implementing a universal mobile authentication service. More specifically, how will the application of this technology translate into per-unit costs? Simons spends a lot of time traveling the globe in an effort to get major stakeholders on the same page when it comes to mobile authentication technology. Through his involvement with the Aspen Institute as a National Geographic fellow and the World Economic Forum’s mobile communications global agenda council, he says he’s trying to ensure that the “top leadership” is mobilized on the issue.

Sproxil and mPedigree's History and Focus

Sproxil and mPedigree have different approaches to promoting mobile drug certification technology.
There’s a twist to this story, however.  Ashifi Gogo and Bright Simons used to be partners in the first incarnation of mPedigree, before Gogo decided to go his own way with Sproxil due to what Simons describes as “a growing distance in terms of focus.”  The two parted ways and there is still significant acrimony between the men and the early history of mPedigree. (Editor's note: We noted conflicting details in interviews with both Simons and Gogo that could not be reconciled, and were warned of 'potential legal implications' in regard to some of our assertions made in this article.)

Today, the way each company manages its technology today reflects the inclinations of its leader.

Gogo’s engineering background shapes his hands-on approach with Sproxil, while Simons’ experience with development research and social studies led him to seek out partners to develop and manage the technology mPedigree is promoting.

The Sproxil platform is flexible, Gogo says. Among its features is a portal that shows how many unique users companies are gaining every month; it can also generate custom graphs for sales. The inclusion of customized recommendations to the consumer in the outgoing response message is another way companies can establish a direct connection with the end-user of their product. (For Glucophage, for example: “Diabetic? Check your blood sugar levels often to better manage.”) For new deployments, all that needs to be adapted is the language and content of the SMS. Gogo hinted that Sproxil is working to support different labeling formats to suit specific client needs.

Simons, on the other hand, admits that mPedigree is “not interested in managing the technological infrastructure” behind its efforts. The firm is working with HP, a leading provider of cloud-computing and data-center management, on a different system. According to Simons, mPedigree is also collaborating with several other Fortune 500 companies on other technical aspects, including innovations in the printing and labeling of medicine packets to allow for a smooth integration with the rest of the mobile authentication system. (UPDATE: We were asked to remove the names of the specific companies by Mr. Simons.)

“Medicine trade is dominated by very sophisticated, risk-averse businesses,” Simons says. “So we needed a really heavyweight partner on the technology side.” Having HP involved helps mPedigree to resolve trust and brand issues, he says, and signals to major industry players that the technology is reliable and credible.

Succeeding where Others Fail

“The industry in Nigeria has been looking for solutions, searching for types of technologies that could work” to help combat drug counterfeiting, says Femi Soremekun, the Biofem executive who took a chance with Sproxil. Nigeria had considered using a hologram-based security device that was successful in Malaysia, he says. “GSK had a malaria product which they put a hologram on, but within a month, they had seen fake holograms on counterfeit products that looked more original than the GSK hologram. “That scared everybody,” he adds, “because if the hologram technology is being tampered with on a GSK product, what’s going to happen with the rest of the industry?”

This is where Sproxil and mPedigree come in.

Sproxil’s commercial success and mPedigree’s progress in partnering with key global industry players are a testament to the market’s growing acceptance of mobile authentication technology as an effective means of combating counterfeiting.  Sproxil and mPedigree “are operating at the vanguard of the field,” says Simons. “We’ve been carried along by the right crests on the current mobile health wave.”

Penelope Chester is an occasional writer for MobileActive.org. She tweets at @penelopeinparis.

Photo courtesy Wayan Vota

In 2006, Jasmine News began sending SMS news headlines to subscribers in Sri Lanka, the first to do so in the country. Today, the service sends 60 to 90 messages a month to 170,000 subscribers, who pay Rs.30 per month ($0.30) for the service.

Jasmine News provides brief news headlines sent via SMS on general topics including politics, law, current events, business, sports, and entertainment.  They also have a website (in English, Sinhala, and Tamil), though posted content is mostly of SMS length. The SMS news updates are also available in multiple languages, including Java-based Sinhala and Tamil (on operator Etisalat) as well as Singlish (Sinhala in transliterated English).

To become a subscriber, a mobile user types a code such as "reg JNW" and sends it to an established shortcode (2233) to subscribe for the push service. A local number is required.

Since Jasmine News launched the service, other existing news outlets have added SMS delivery services, including TV channel Derana and newspaper Daily Mirror.

A clear need and a good working relationship with mobile providers

Chamath Ariyadasa, a founder of the service, has worked as a TV journalist, a correspondent for Reuters, and as a bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires in Colombo. Ariyadasa explains that Jasmine News was a natural progression for him, especially because “a majority of people in a country like Sri Lanka are out of the loop in terms of key news and information.”

For Ariyadasa, Jasmine News fills two important needs: inclusion and empowerment through information. And it does so at a price that many people can afford: Rs.30 per month. Hence, anyone with a mobile phone in Sri Lanka can be plugged into key news, Ariyadasa said.

For their 170,000 subscribers, Jasmine News can most clearly be labeled a success. But how did it get here? First, the environment was ideal. With 15 million mobile phone subscribers in Sri Lanka, there was a clear need for an affordable and convenient method to receive news via phone, Ariyadasa said.  

Another success for Jasmine News comes from a good working relationship with many mobile operators in Sri Lanka. This ensures that news can be delivered to subscribers on any network in the country. Mobile operators also help advertise the service through messages to their audiences, Ariyadasa said, which has helped grow the subscriber base.

To send bulk SMS messages, Jasmine News relies on platforms that mobile operators use themselves as well as from outside software providers. The service is not involved in platform development.

Couldn’t a subscriber just forward the content?

SMS news delivery, in general, is not without challenges. A rather obvious problem for paid subscription-based models is that text messages are easy to forward. Does this cause a problem? It would seem so, especially since Jasmine News lists this issue first in the terms and conditions section of the website:

1)Jasmine Newswires (Pvt) Ltd text news cannot be forwarded to third parties and is grounds for termination of your service without liability to Jasmine Newswires.

The clause was included when the service launched in 2006 to discourage forwarding - at a time when the service was priced at $7 per month. Ariyadasa said that this issue is no longer a concern (and one that would be difficult to enforce, for that matter): while people do forward content, it costs them more to forward at $0.05 per SMS than to subscribe themselves at $0.30 per month for 60 to 90 messages.

The close relationship with mobile providers, while an asset for subscriber accessibility, does raise issues of content control. “The question of who ultimately takes responsibility for the news is something that we seem to be exploring, even though we are contractually taking full liability and freeing the telecos of all responsibility,” Ariyadasa said.

“As we offer the same content on multiple operators, I would say we are 90% independent of the telecos,” Ariyadasa added. Jasmine News currently works with six mobile providers.

Another challenge lies in creating two-way communication between the public and news providers via SMS. Ariyadasa said this is something they haven’t yet achieved with Jasmine News, and that it would require a concerted push and an investment in a content management system linked to the subscriber database.

"I would like to see those replies and comments landing on a website so that its easily accessible by others. Mobile operators are unlikely to immediately invest in this without seeing a clear benefit," Ariyadasa said. "I feel a phased approach is also better, which is why we haven't pushed for it immediately."

What’s Next for Jasmine News?

Currently, any visitor to Jasmine News can post comments on the website and it has received 1,373 such comments to date. Ariyadasa said that a push to include MMS photos and video wasn’t successful: bulk MMS was a "significant load on the system" and isn't a popular service. Derana, a news site in Pakistan, sends SMS messages with a link to a video clip, but Ariyadasa said this too is not popular and Jasmine News will explore other MMS options in the future.

Another future route will be more personalized news delivery via SMS. Currently, Jasmine News subscribers can select from topics of general, business, or sports news. Further selection and delivery by topic and region “will clearly be a major plus” but implementing it will evolve slowly, Ariyadasa said, not least because the mobile providers must first see a business case for it. And to separate their subscribers into regional areas to allow targeted SMS news delivery will require providers to invest in back-end processes.

A big-picture takeaway is the role of SMS news headlines within media: the technology may help get “back to the basics of good journalism,” Ariyadasa said. Due to liability concerns for the mobile providers, there is a renewed emphasis on named sources in all messages. Every SMS headline sent includes the source of the report.

“This, in my opinion, was frequently absent in local media before,” Ariyadasa said. “The emphasis on sourcing is awakening a consciousness that all news is in fact sourced or needs to be clearly labeled as opinion.”

This Youtube video originally broadcast on Young Asian Television explains more about Jasmine News and the larger implications of SMS news delivery.