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by Carlo Longino


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Chinese Carriers Hope Cyrano Services Will Boost Messaging

from the 1-800-get-poetry dept

Chinese mobile carriers have taken an interesting approach to stimulate text messaging use -- hiring people to write brief messages and poems they send out to subscribers in hopes they'll forward them on to friends and family. The carriers get ghostwriters to come up with cheesy poems and greetings, then basically spam people and hope they'll pass things along. It's an interesting approach, and one that probably wouldn't go down very well in a lot of other cultures: nothing says I love you like a forwarded spam.

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  1. Iriguchi Hifumi by dorpus on Oct 26th, 2005 @ 1:49pm

    Reminds me of a guy whose name translates as "Entrance 1-2-3" (入口一二三), who was arrested for burglarizing 145 Buddhist temples and stealing altar money.

    http://www.asahi.com/national/update/1026/OSK200510260081.html

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  2. Re: Iriguchi Hifumi by nostranonymous on Oct 26th, 2005 @ 2:32pm

    HTF does this remind you of that guy? As cheesy as these sms messages sound, I predict some will pass them around. Provided they have no charges for sms and until friends who don't complain about having them sent to them. I say this because I have a few friends (all women, coincidence?) who send me these things sometimes several times a day. It's not enough of an annoyance for me to demand that they stop, but if I had to pay to receive them that wouldn't be the case.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

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