One small step for T-Mobile, a bigger step for end-users…

It would be great if all network providers dropped the “double opt-in” requirements that makes campaign certification (and re-certification over time) a pain in the neck, not to mention expensive. Instead, companies that offer services over texting should (vs. being mandated to) follow the guidelines defined by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), which are guidelines that will continue to evolve over time, as needed by the market needs.

Wouldn’t it be great if “double opt-in” was a general user-profile/settable preference that is set once but that it worked across all campaigns (users can always STOP the service at any time). Imagine a setting that the user can set once on their first message ever sent by the user, asking if she would like to enforce double opt-in or not on all future texting service notifications (as a side-note, double opt-in is only really needed for Pushes/notifications and not User-initiated requests).

…hm, so that might be an idea, a web-based API to query for the double opt-in setting, perhaps an extension to OpenSocial or something similar? Of course, I am over-simplifying this, as there are other implications, such as security, and where would this setting reside? At the carrier? At the message aggregator? At the user’s “global profile of choice”?

ceo

[Via Mobile Marketing Watch]