Let me try to get this straight. You receive SMS on your phone, then your phone forwards that SMS to TreasureMyText (TMT), which mean I will be charged for two SMS (one receive, one send), is it right? Then what's the point?

Also, for mobile users other than US & Canada, Netherlands, they have to use the UK number to forward their SMS, which their carriers will charge them at international rate.

All and all, I don't see any point in using TreasureMyText, when you will have a better service, namely Peekamo. They not only allow you to receive and store SMS, they also allow you to send SMS as well, either by using the web interface, or by your own phone. Same rule of the general number.

One great thing about Peekamo is that, SMS received by Peekamo on your phone, as well as SMS sent by your phone, is totally free. I'm using US T-mobile with the plan of 400 messages a month, and not a single SMS through Peekamo appear on my statement. Free, not paying anything!

Peekamo also have the "social life" thingy, the so-called web 2.0, and everybody sends SMS to each other by nickname, not the real phone number, so you can avoid spam!

I wrote a small article here about Peekamo:
http://esente.info/blog/2008/01/04/send-free-sms-to-all-over-the-world/

Note: I'm not anyway affiliated with Peekamo or any of its staff. I'm just a happy user!

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Essente,

as a user of TMT, I would love to help clear up some of the confusion and also answer a few of your questions.

Your phone does not automatically forward text messages to TMT, not unless you set it up to do so, so no extra cost, unless you, personally, decide to forward your SMS.

Receiving SMS is free over here, but this may be provider dependent. Obviously, if you pay for receiving SMS, this is not something that TMT has under control and as such, cannot be attributed to them.

You state that carriers will charge you for an international rate, however, this is largely dependent on the fact that TMT simply has not expanded into other markets. The service you mention, Peekamo, for example, does not have a shortcode in the Netherlands, so I, as a Dutch user, would be charged an international rate, as opposed to sending free SMS (up to 1000 each month) to the "local" TMT number.

My views are obviously biased (as are yours), but I find it hard to compare two different services to one another.

You go on to state that Peekamo also has that "web 2.0 / social life thingy going" and that is where the services differ. TreasureMyText is an online storage solution for text messages (hence the name) as opposed to Peekamo which is a social networking site (according to their FAQ).

Once again, you state that receiving SMS from Peekamo is free on your phone and thereby imply that receiving texts from TMT is billed against your account. I have been using TMT for a couple of months now and have not paid for one single SMS I received from their site, but again, this might be operator independent.

You state that sending SMS with Peekamo is free (TMT charges 5 cent for SMS, to any location in the world.), however, in your blog post, go on to state that every short message has a short advertisement attached to it. This is, again, where the services differ.

When you save a short message from a loved on, you do not want to have any contextual ads attached to it, not even if that makes the service free, but your opinion might deviate from mine in this case.

TMT's site also, similarly to Peekamo, offers the possibility to send text messages (which are received as being sent from your own number, so your contacts can directly answer you, instead of the website).

All in all, while the services utilize the same underlying technology, namely SMS, the features offered are very different to each other.

Please note that I am not affiliated with TreasureMyText, I am just a very happy user of their service.

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Dear Kerim Satirli,

I've used TMT for a few days and I agree with you, the two services are different from each other. I, however, would like to point out some points:

For sending SMS, does TMT allow you to send SMS from your own phone? (I actually don't know about this) As I stated about the international rate when using shortcode, this is only applied for those who'd wish to send SMS by the phone, in the countries outside of US and UK. Sending SMS from the website of Peekamo is totally free, as opposed to TMT's charging of 5cent/message.

About the "social networking", does TMT also have the TextStream? It is kinda similar to Peekamo's social feature, which allow you to keep track of other users, as well as adding friends, sharing SMS with them, etc. For this point, I think they're not different.

On the receiving side, I never received SMS from TMT, so I can't tell. But my point was, although the fact that receiving SMS in US is charged for all providers, SMS from Peekamo is free, just like invisibly sneaking through the provider's network. If in the country where receiving SMS is free, then the ones from Peekamo is also free, so Peekamo has a plus here!

It's true that SMS from Peekamo contain ads. However, for a while now, the only text included in the SMS is (sent using www.peekamo.com), not any other ads. But well, if you're the kind that don't want any ad at all, then yeah, it can be annoying to see anything other than what the message's supposed to be.

Again, because receiving SMS is charged here in the US, one may not want to give out his phone number so much. Showing only you ID (name, nickname, etc) is still recognizable, and safe. Heh, once all your contacts signed up for Peekamo, all can text message from their own phone, to each other. No need for the web interface.

Don't get me wrong though. I'm using TMT and I like it. It allows me to store SMS that are not sent through Peekamo. Since I use Peekamo to send and receive SMS all the time, my 400 SMS/month plan is too much. Using TMT is a great way to store those outside SMS instead of pluging my phone into the computer and coping them over.

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