Oriya portal offers free breaking news on mobile phone

Friday, 11 January 2008, 20:30 IST
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Bhubaneswar: An Oriya news portal is offering free news briefs to all its readers through SMS. The portal, www.odisha.com, has introduced the service after a tie-up with SMSGupShup, a free group messaging service provided by Mumbai-based Webaroo Technology India Pvt Ltd. The portal already introduced last month a premium local breaking news service for mobile subscribers. It has now said it would also provide the news for free. The free news would contain advertisements. A person interested in subscribing to the service needs to send an SMS "JOIN Odisha" to 567678. To unsubscribe, a subscriber has to send an SMS saying "LEAVE Odisha" to the same number. While odisha.com will provide the content, SMSGupShup will provide the free group SMS technology and platform. The two signed a memorandum of understanding Thursday. While the premium service will continue to run without advertisement, Odisha.com and SMSGupShup aim to recover the cost of content and free SMS service by inserting targeted and contextual ads at the end of every SMS message. "A person in remote Kandhamal or Koraput district is not interested to know what the government announces in Bhubaneswar," a company official said. "He is more interested to know what is happening around him. Similarly, Oriyas who live outside the state are more interested to know what is happening in their home state," he added. "Our breaking news service will help them to know all these free of cost," he said.
Source: IANS