by Brian Solis
Kwiry, pronounced query, celebrated its grand opening today.
With kwiry, people use their cell phone to text personal reminders to their online account and email.
Instead of Ronco’s infamous, “Set it and forget it,” Kwiry says, “Text it and don’t forget it.” OK, so I just made that up. But, basically, that’s the point.
According to the company press release, “People often watch TV, read a magazine, talk to friends or see a billboard and think, ‘I should check that out’ or ‘I should e-mail that to a friend.’ kwiry gives them a way to remember those things easily, with just a cell phone.”
Anyone can use the service simply by sending a text message to 59479 (K-W-I-R-Y). Registered users have their kwirys (text messages) stored for them at kwiry.com and the service quickly integrates with other sites like Facebook, iGoogle and myYahoo.
Once people are online, one click turns kwirys into search results from sites like Yahoo, Google, Wikipedia, Amazon and more. kwiry also lets users mark their ‘favorite’ search results so the best sites stay linked to each kwiry. People can create their own community at kwiry.com with photos, profiles, and comments or integrate kwiry into their existing social networks.
To bring back Ronco…but wait, there’s more.
Kwiry is also a “viral” platform that allows advertisers, magazines, TV networks, and radio stations to use text messages to drive traffic from mobile phones to their websites in a unique way.
kwiry’s viral system turns each text message into valuable page views from the entire community. This focus on building a community using the inherently valuable reminder service makes kwiry compelling for partners because it gives them a new channel to drive traffic to their online content.
GamePro Magazine currently uses kwiry to drive thousands of its print readers to GamePro.com. HGTV is pilot testing kwiry for the show “Don’t Sweat It” to drive viewers to project information and videos at HGTV.com. Partners measure results with online reports or through Omniture’s Site Catalyst, which is integrated with kwiry’s analytics platform.
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Discussion
I am still waiting for an application that allows me to speak into the phone and have my messages sent as text. There are a few out there, but nothing useful yet.
Hi Anita, try Jott…
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your thoughtful and thorough post about our launch! I’m Ron, the company’s CEO and co-founder.
We look forward to getting feedback from all our new users and making the service even more valuable with new features. One of those planned future features is actually integration with Jott via their API, which should hopefully help for situations where voice is best or for people who prefer voice. (e.g. comment/question above)
I encourage everyone to sign-up for kwiry (it’s free) and try it out. Please e-mail me with any questions you don’t see covered in the FAQ or feedback at ronf AT kwiry DOT com.