Sendible Helps Schedule Messages

There are times when it makes sense to write a message now to be delivered in the future. Reminders are the classic case: if I need to remember the book sale Friday, I can put it on my task list today and forget it until the notification arrives. But there are other use-cases as well: birthday greetings, status message changes when you’re not around to update things personally, and so on.

Sendible’s mission is to unify and manage all of these future messages for you. It offers a single-web based interface where you can manage future status updates to Twitter or Facebook, messages to MySpace, Friendster, Hi5, and Orkut, plus future SMS messages and emails, as well as reminders to yourself. It also keeps a list of your contacts (developed as you send messages) and lets you view all of your Sendible activity in a calendar-based interface. You can edit messages up until the time that they are actually sent.

Status message updates are as easy to enter through Sendible as they are through, say, the Twitter interface - and when they’re delivered, they’re indistinguishable from live messages. When you move over to email and SMS, though, you discover the Sendible business model: it’s supported by its own internal, organic advertising network. With a free account, you can play on either side of this network.

When you send an email or SMS via Sendible, they’ll tack a little ad on at the bottom. Some of those ads are their own - little things like “Plan ahead and schedule…” with their URL. But you can also create your own ads, with headline, URL, text, and display period - as well as keywords. When someone else sends a message with one of those keywords, your ad might be tacked on. You get 5 ad credits to play with - after that, they come in packages starting at 100 credits for $12. On the other side of the fence, you can buy SMS credits at 100 for $10, allowing you to send ad-free SMS messages (and to send more than the 5 per day that you get for free).

Sendible promises to censor any inappropriate ads, though I don’t see any clear guidelines on their site as to what falls outside the limits.

One more thing to note: depending on how much your email is locked down, you may have some issues with Sendible’s emails not being delivered. That’s because Sendible is spoofing your return address on mail from their servers, which means that it will fail SPF validation. If you’re sending to recipients at networks with a thorough anti-spam lockdown - like Hotmail - this will be a problem.