Ironically, just as I was reading No Logo by Noami Klein on how we are losing cultural space due to the invasion of corporate branding, Channel NewsAsia showed the latest advancement by this unrelenting army: advertisements embedded in SMS in the form of an application, SMS 2.0. (Please, the suffix of ’2.0′ to any half baked product that came out in the past few years has been already heavily over used, get a real name)

Actually, the news article itself is a tad misleading, it highlights advertising as the main selling point, and barely other functions of it. Funny how the ads part is being touted as an added ‘service’ and the usually bullshit on how it would bring joy to the world and raise kittens from the dead. ‘Personal and customized’ ads are nonsensical buzzwords – no ad is ever personal and customization means privacy issues.

Although no sane person would ever voluntarily elect to be the target of spam, some brainwashed and wannabe-cool teenager would get lured into signing up just so he could throw some whacky emoticons and seizure including colours on it.

However, it would seem that an option for turning off the ads is available, but I’m positive that there would be a catch to it. Putting ourselves in the corporate shoe for a moment, who would roll out a product banking on revenues from the ads just so the majority could, and definitely will, bypass it?

At present, the good news for the majority of us is the ad infection is still limited to selected phones on the Nokia platform and given how complex the mobile development ecosphere is (Nokia has a dozen platforms, Windows Mobile, Symbian and even custom linux builds!), it seems unlikely that it would be too widespread.

Links:
Original article
SMS 2.0′s site