SMSall is a service in Pakistan that enables mailing-list style interaction over SMS. It serves over 2.1 million people, and an average of 300 million SMS messages are sent every month (follow the total SMS count on the website). It is Pakistan’s largest SMS social network.
The founder of the service, Umar Saif, refers to it as “Twitter for SMS,” or as “Twitter for the 4 billion,” referring to the 4 billion people in the world who have access to mobile phones but not the Internet.
SMSall formed in response to the 2005 Kashmir earthquake in Pakistan. Like most Pakistani’s, Saif said, he tried to help during the aftermath but realized that although there were many rescue workers, there was no way to coordinate activities. “You would travel to a remote region with medicine, only to realize that there is plenty of medicine and all they needed were tents and warm clothing,' he said.
So Saif took action. On his laptop, he hacked together a basic response service, connected a mobile phone, and set up a broadcast group for all the rescue workers in the area. Those who subscribed to the “rescue group” would then receive SMS messages and information from the entire group.
From this grew the current-day SMSall service, the largest SMS social network in Pakistan. MobileActive.org spoke with Saif to hear more about the growth and next steps for the SMS service.
How does it work?
With the Kashmir earthquake, people could send an SMS to the service and ask to subscribe to the rescue group. Subsequently, they would receive SMS messages from everyone who posted to the rescue channel. This way, rescuers could keep in contact, in real-time, with only a basic mobile phone.
Now, SMSall users can create a group, join a group, follow a group, and broadcast to a group. The service has been used to spur blood donations, to communicate emergency responses, and to mobilize citizens in political protests. The service is used both by NGOs and more informally by people to keep in touch with friends and build communities around common interests.
SMSall became a popular platform for communication during media bans at the end of Musharraf’s rule. Political activists and members of civil society used SMSall to coordinate protests and activities. “One of the biggest groups on SMSall was run by an NGO setup by families of “missing persons” -- people who disappeared without trace during the political upheaval that gripped Pakistan in 2007 and 2008,” Saif said.
When a disaster or breaking news event occurs, specific groups form almost organically. An SMSall user will first notify an established group of friends and family, and from these many simultaneous chats, specific disaster or emergency groups are often formed, Saif said. The service resembles Twitter in that messages are being “pushed” out and viewed by any number of followers. Currently, there are over over 150,000 established groups on SMSall in Pakistan.
During the early days of SMSall, it was used to coordinate class quizzes and exams and communicate course schedules at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). Saif worked with several students to tweak the system and used it in a course he taught. Other professors followed his lead, students started using it, and “before we knew it, the system went viral, very quickly,” Saif said. SMSall is currently used by over 180 colleges and universities in Pakistan. And from this grew the “SMS mailing list” in Pakistan.
Over 10,000 citizen reports relating to widespread flooding in Pakistan have been submitted across the spectrum of organizations using the SeenReport platform. The service allows anyone to create a profile and submit text, photos, and videos from a mobile phone for immediate publication on the Web.
The case study is part of the Mobile Media Toolkit that will include many other case studies, how-to guides, resources, and tools on how use mobile phones for reporting, content delivery, and citizen participation, to be puplished this Fall.
If You Build It, They Will Come: SeenReport and Mobile Citizen Journalism in Pakistan data sheet 4310 Views
The devastating floods in Pakistan have been covered by trained reporters and mainstream media outlets around the world. Citizens, often on the front lines of the flood, have also been contributing thousands of reports through mobile phones, in part enabled by the citizen journalism service SeenReport.
SeenReport (from “see ‘n report”) is a citizen journalism service through which users can submit photos, videos, and text accounts of news as it is happening via SMS, MMS, or e-mail. SeenReport won a 2010 mBillionth award, a first-ever contest which recognizes mobile content in South Asia. A YouTube video explains more about the service.
The SeenReport platform is designed to augment stories on online news sites. The platform has been purchased and customized by other media organizations in Pakistan, which helps to both promote citizen journalism in the country and to create a revenue stream for SeenReport.
In Pakistan even the cheapest mobile phones, those without cameras or other advanced features, come with the ability to listen to FM radio. Every day, and especially during cricket matches, people walk around the streets with their phones pressed to their ears, tuned into their local stations, says Huma Yusuf, a journalist based in Pakistan.
On November 3, 2007 Pakistan's President Musharraf declared a state of emergency and martial law in Pakistan, suspending the Pakistan constitution. During the next three months, during the short-lived emergency rule, Bhutto's assassination, and the general election in February of 2008, there was an unprecedented outpouring of citizen media, organizing and information sharing facilitated by new media -- blogging, mobile phones, and online video.
Huma Yusuf, an astute and eloquent journalist based in Karachi, has reported now on the convergence of old and new media during the 'Pakistan emergency,' as it is most often referred to in the country. It is a must-read document for anyone interested in citizen media, particularly in times of political turmoil, for the wealth of insights it provides on the current uses of digital media and the opportunities for future work in this area.
Bloggers, activists and organizers in Pakistan are using SMS - short test messages - to coordinate protests and send updates on the political situation since Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf imposed martial law on November 3. Only 12% of Pakistanis have access to the internet and therefore mobile phones are a particularly useful communication tool in the current media blackout, imposed since emergency rule was imposed. Bloggers in Pakistan report that November 3 had the "highest number" of SMS messages sent -- an average of about 10 per mobile phone.
Now, SMSall users can create a group, join a group, follow a group, and broadcast to a group. The service has been used to spur blood donations, to communicate emergency responses, and to mobilize citizens in political protests. The service is used both by NGOs and more informally by people to keep in touch with friends and build communities around common interests. 
