Great idea? Need a Netflix? MUST remember? Text it to yourself via Kwiry!

August 20th, 2008

Over the course of their careers, Vincent Van Gough, Henri Matisse, and Ernest Hemmingway popularly owed much to Moleskines: tiny, portable notebooks in which they would record ideas and thoughts in order to remember them for future use. The modern version of the Moleskine is here and it’s name is Kwiry.

As Kwiry’s CEO Ron Feldman explains, “Kwiry is a simple service to help you use your cellphone to send things to the internet. It’s a way to help you remember things you see and hear when you’re not near your computer. Our goal is to bridge the real world and the internet with your mobile phone.”

By text messaging a “kwiry” –a SMS note-to-self– to 59479, users can maintain an inbox-style organization of ideas, questions, and, you guessed it, queries. Kwiry users can also email kwiries from smart phones; MMS message photos; Twitter kwiries to the site; and, through an innovative integration with Jott, can speak their kwiries; which are then transcribed and messaged.

Although Kwiry’s motto continues to be “text it before you forget it”, the company is growing into being something more than a simple text-to-remember service. With the mid-August introduction of Kwiry Shortcuts, Kwiry has transcended its original function towards something that is excitingly bigger and better. Feldman explains the concept of Shortcuts, saying, “there is a bunch of tasks that we like to use the internet to do, but when we’re away from our computer, we don’t necessarily have access to do those things.” Feldman and his company first developed Kwiry Shortcuts for Netflix and Amazon. Kwiry users can both use the service to add movies to their Netflix queue by kwirying NETFLIX and movie’s name, and to add products to their Amazon wishlist which is done by kwirying AMAZON and the product name. As Feldman explains, “they create a shortcut of doing a task online instead of having to remember it and do it later.” With the inclusion of shortcuts into the Kwiry service, the company both achieves its goal and sets a precedent to further bridge the real world and the internet. Feldman says, “Whether it’s integrating with a third party company or building specific applications for phones like the iPhone for example, the goal is to make it as easy as possible and give people the options to do it in the simplest way possible.”

As Kwiry’s functionality evolves, Feldman maintains that his company is sticking to its original premise. He says, “We started our service as pretty basic but, fundamentally, our core vision and value proposition haven’t changed. Whenever you see or hear something that you want to remember to do, text it in to Kwiry. What we want to do is become more intelligent about processing the thoughts that you have while on the go. You can go back to your computer and find that Kwiry intelligently did something for you and made your life easier by taking some steps. An equivalent service is a travel organization company called TripIt, where you send them an email confirmation from a hotel, rental car, or a flight and they process that and add it into a custom itinerary for you on their website. That’s similar to our concept. We want to intelligently process things that you see and hear on the go, so that when you get back to your computer, your life becomes that much more efficient.”

While Kwiry’s strength lies in its ability to simplify the lives of users, it also has a budding social-networking facet. While most focus lies on the actual utility of queuing Netflix movies and Amazon purchases, some must be directed towards the fact that Kwiry itself also has the ability to bring users’ attention to new products and interests. As members submit kwiries, they can opt to have their kwiries displayed in a newsfeed of sorts on Kwiry or on Kwiry’s Facebook Application. 

Feldman elaborates; saying, “We have a whole lot of social features that don’t get that much attention, and we think they’re quite interesting. The idea is that you might discover an interesting movie, book, product, or restaurant, and this way your friends get to hear about it passively without you having to remember to tell them about it.”

Ultimately, Kwiry is so convenient for it’s users because it is a great, universal service that is truly tailored for anyone interested in using it. In a mobile world that is increasingly dependant upon smart phones and mobile internet, the fact that Kwiry is SMS based makes it functional and very useful while staying comfortable and accessible. Feldman notes, “Text messaging is the only real service, other than voice, that is readily available to everybody that has a cellphone, and it is increasingly becoming the only service, other than voice, that people are comfortable using. It’s a behavior that most of us engage in daily. Simply adding Kwiry to an address book and sending Kwiry a text message is a very natural behavior, and we want to make it seamless and don’t want people to have to adopt something completely new. It’s just as if you made a new friend and their name was Kwiry.”  

Kwiry is currently hosting two promotions for users of their service. Through their It’s On Us sweepstakes, Kwiry will pick one lucky Kwiry Shortcut user each week who will win either a free month’s subscription to Netflix or up to $25 worth of products added to their Amazon Wishlist. Also, by adding the Kwiry Facebook application or by inviting friends to join Kwiry, users will be eligible to win a Nintendo Wii. Winners will be announced August 31, 2008.
-JPK

Entry Filed under: Services via Text