Health check

Numbers: We crossed 2500 users a couple of days ago. Growth has slowed, but is still steady.
The system is chugging away normally once again - no more delayed messages!
We hope to add our new hardware by mid-January so please bear with the limitations of Mobs until then - we're going all out in the meanwhile on improving features.
On a slightly different note, Asim Rehman from BMS dropped us a mail about the fact that towards the middle of last week, the first few characters of the message was getting lost. We've got this fixed now - thanks Asim! So keep talking to us - we need to hear from you guys.

Swalpa adjust maadi...

Alrighty, today's numbers: we had 220 mobbers join us, bring us up to 1792 mobbers in toto - and we didn't bother trying to count how many messages we sent out ;-).

We've also added some temporary (we mean that!) restrictions to keep our server from going down:
- We're not mobbing messages longer than 130 characters
- We're not mobbing messages to mobs with more than 15 members

We're in the process of ordering a bunch of new hardware - modems, servers, yada-yada. We're also begging, borrowing or stealing our friends and relatives desktops. And all this purely for your mobbing pleasure. So please, until we get all this online, swalpa adjust maadi...

How're we doing today?

Well, the good news is that we've crossed the 1000 user mark and are sending out in excess of 10000 messages a day.
On the downside, our hardware is starting to buckle under the load. We knew that sooner or later we'd start to hit the limits of our home-brewed infrastructure - indeed we needed to reach that limit in order to know what it was so that we could plan our upgrades more effectively.
Now that we've actually hit that limit, we need you guys to hold out for a few days while we do some upgradation. We know messages are taking pretty long to get delivered. We're working on it - and we need you to bear with us in the meanwhile. We'll be as good as new before you know it!

130 new users in 1 day!

Yeah, baby! We've added 130 new users in a single day, the highest thus far in the ten days since we started. We now have 630 users onboard!
Even more interesting is the creation of Mobs in Dharwad, Manipal, Mysore, Suratkal and Tumkur. While we have friends in Manipal and Suratkal who have heard of Activ Mobs from us and are probably responsible for the activity in those cities, we had nothing at all to do with the others.
Looks like the ball is starting to roll and we want you along for the ride. Keep mobbing!

What’s the story, morning glory?

It’s been little over a week since we launched Activ Mobs and given the response, I figure it’s time to start blogging about it. We’re already hitting upwards of 400 users and are sending out some 5000 messages in a day and are aiming for 10000 users at the end of two months.

So what is Activ Mobs? Mobs is a free (YEAH, FREE – in case you missed it :-)) SMS based group chat service available to mobile users in Karnataka. Quite simply, it’s conference calls for SMS. If you are part of a group of people who need to communicate with each other (your car-pool, your project team, your circle of friends, your family...), Mobs is for you. One person no longer needs to co-ordinate in order to inform all members of the group, organize something or reach a decision – everyone in the mob talks to everyone else.

Next question – how do you try this out? It’s quite simple. SMS name yournickname to 9844622848 (22848 reads on your keypad as ACTIV so it’s easy to remember) and you’re ready to roll! You'll get all the help you'll need to create your Mobs, add your friends to them and to start messaging.