Teleflip’s final Flipmail?
Image via CrunchBase, source unknown SMS email provider Teleflip is shutting down their Flipmail service on Friday. When they premiered at DEMO in 2007, the premise was that everyone could have email on their mobile phone, without having to buy a smart phone. The company burst onto the scene with a coast-to-coast PR blitz resulting in breathless headlines with the message that any cellphone could act like a BlackBerry. Now that smartphones have reached the tipping point, driven by red hot products from Apple and RIM, it’s easy to see how Teleflip would have come under increasing pressure.
And so, in a manner befitting Teleflip’s business, just a few minutes ago I received the final Flipmail from the team. Delivered by SMS in three pieces it reads:
Subj: Important Note From Teleflip
Dear Teleflip Beta User: Thanks for being part of the beta testing group using our Flipmail service, however, we are now ending this service. We’ve gone as far as we can with our financial sources, and the piggy bank is empty. Effective Friday August 15, 2008 at 9:00AM Pacific Daylight Time,
Ex-employees I spoke with spoke of budgetary cuts, and that most employees, excepting the C-Suite, had been laid off in January to reduce burn in an effort to conserve cash while raising additional capital. None could confirm that the company was indeed winding up, however, and suggested I reach out to CEO Tony Davis. We’ll see what he has to say.
Judging by the fact that their website security certificate expired 4 days ago, I would say that things don’t look promising.
August 12th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
[...] their Wikipedia page. Alec Saunders shares his thoughts on the shutdown of the service, pointing out that as smart phones become commonplace, [...]
August 14th, 2008 at 1:20 am
[...] via GigaOM via Saunderslog [...]
August 27th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
I was sorry to see teleflip go - it saved me a lot in data roaming charges (ipaq 6950) -
found a great free replacement http://www.amikamobile.net same email to text service
September 5th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
So, where did the investor’s $4.9 million received by the company in January go?
September 18th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
At our company we have text messaging block for all phones because it was costing us too much per month. At one time we were paying up to $4,000 in text messaging for Nextel alone! And we have 3,200 phones on Nextel. To work around that, we were having our 1,070 Blackberry users, on all our cell phone vendors, use Teleflip to text their customers. Now that Teleflip is down we have been researching to find something, anything similar to Teleflip that does not require us to download any type of software or register for any service, even if it is free. Has anyone found a service similar to Teleflip that would meet our needs?
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Red Oxygen has a service with their Red API. You can send the messages mobilenumber@redoxygen.net. But, you have to pay for it.
http://www.redoxygen.com