FREE FOR ALL

Free SMS? No big deal. SMS without a catch? Now, there's something worth pursuing. At least, that's what 19-year-old CEO, Aaron Hornlimann thought in February of 2005, when he came up with the idea for his now-booming computer-to-mobile texting company, Intazaar.
"We're certainly not the first company in Australia to offer people the chance to send a free test message from their computer to a mobile phone," laughs aaron, "but we're the first to offer the service without any scams"
By scams, Aaron refers to the nasty little sms marketing techniques that scare most of us off free texting offers-having our contact details on-sold to marketers, having our phone bombarded with advertising spam, having a lengthy advertising slogan sit at th end of every 'free' text message we send, or receving five 'free' text messages only to find that we'll be charged for others. "With Intazaar, you simply register with us via our website", says Aaron. "Then you build your address list and and can send 30 free texts a day to any mobile in Australia. We will never spam you, on-sell your details, charge you or run a slogan on your message." So, how then does Aaron make a buck? "When you register online for free SMS, we have you fill in a form detailing your address, age, sex and occupation. The information you give us is confidential and we don't pass it, however it allows us to compile very specific demographics about who is visiting our website. We approach companies who are marketing to similar demographics to see if they'd be interested in posing advertisments on our website-not 'pop up'screens though, they annoy people. If the advertisers place an ad on our web pages, we charge them for pleasure of being able to target their specific market." Really, no website pop-up screens? "Truly," says Aaron "We pride ourselves on ethical marketing. All along i was told I'd never be able to offer free SMS unless we resorted to scams, but after opening in September 2005, we had 60 0000 peole register for our free SMS by December. Now we're addy 4 000 users a week and have in excess of 148 000 Intazaarians! People know they can trust us." To register for Intazaar's free SMS, visit www.intazaar.com.au