O2's 21202 service

Do you never use up all your monthly mobile minutes and text messages? Well on the O2 network, if you text a blank message to 21202, you will get a return text message with the current minutes and text messages left for this month.

I am surprised that it has taken this long to provide such a feature. From an end user's perspective, it is very useful to know exactly how many minutes/texts you have left. But from an operator's perspective, it also makes sense. OK, you may think that the operators would prefer to see as many unused minutes per month as possible (since users are paying for a service that they then don't need to provide), but giving customers this information we tend to drive traffic onto their network and away from the alternatives. If you can get customers to use their mobile in preference to a landline (or another mobile operator for that matter), then that is a result.

Either way, nice one O2.

The 9 biggest social media failures of the year so far....

Came across this on ZDnet recently and I found it pretty interesting given all the hype about social computing at the moment.