WINCASH With Smart SMS

In my opinion this is NOT how you start SMS adoption.

From BusinessWire.com WINCASH with SMartSMS

June 28, 2005--American IDC Corporation's CEO Gordon Lee announced yet another one of several slated winning campaigns which is starting today.

Anyone with a mobile phone will now have the opportunity to win between $100 and $10,000 per day, using SmartSMS. Players can "Text InTo Win" as often as they like to see if they are Instant Winners. Once they are identified as winners, they will be text messaged a skill-testing question to qualify to win the cash prizes!

All a player needs to do is (1) Find the text message option on his mobile phone; (2) Text in the code "WINCASH"; (3) Send to 76278; (4) Wait for a quick response; and (5) Answer back according to the instructions in the message "Send the return message "WINCASH YES" for a chance to WINCASH instantly!

Here's the catch.

Play as often as you like: .99 cents/msg.rec'd.

This is dangerous in my opinion. Kids could get in big trouble with this. It reminds me a lot of search engine www.iwon.com and their advertising campaign. They would pay people to use their product. I don't recall Google ever paying people to use their search engine.

If a product or service is good, people will discover it and get the word out. Case in point, 4INFO. In my opinion it's better than Google, offers great results and last I recall I don't think they were paying anybody to use the service.

I can tell you though, the "early adopters" discovered this service and have done more advertising than any prize contest could.

What happens after the SmartSMS campaign is over, then what? Where's any value in this except to see if you won money ?