Dotgo uses cell texts to talk to websites
Dotgo creators Stefan Gromoll, left, and Kenneth Lanzetta Credit: Jay Wilson
What if websites and users could communicate via text message?
That is the question that Kenneth Lanzetta and Stefan Gromoll, a professor and graduate student, respectively, at Stony Brook University, asked themselves when they created Dotgo, a text messaging system that has recently been picked up by companies like General Mills and Kia.
"It's all about allowing anyone with a simple cellphone to send a text message to a website, and it allows the website to respond to that message," said Gromoll, 32.
Gromoll explained that users can text the name of a website to "dotcom," or its numerical equivalent 368266, and get an automatic response allowing them to browse the site through text messages.
For example, a user can text the word "weather" to dotcom, and the weather.com site automatically replies, prompting the user to send his or her ZIP code. Then weather.com sends the user the weather report for that ZIP code.
Gromoll and Lanzetta, who both have astrophysics backgrounds, developed Dotgo in 2007 when they were looking for a way to easily get information from websites on cellphones.
"If you don't have a smartphone, this is kind of the only way a website can make their content available to you," Gromoll said. "And even if you do have a smartphone, this is the quickest way to get information. It's much quicker to send one message than to download an app or load a Web browser."
He said other companies offer similar text messaging systems to websites, but users have to remember different numbers to text for each company.
Dotgo allows users to text its code, dotcom, for any site. Their company also owns several other codes, such as dotedu and dotgov, but each works with any URL.
Unique codes, which some businesses use, are expensive for the companies, Gromoll said, and can cost up to $3,000 a month. Therefore, Dotgo allows companies to customize their dotcom text-only sites without such a charge.
Dotgo makes money by charging companies for premium features, such as analytics information or the ability to send out mass messages to subscribers for $9.99 a month.
"Right now there are over 7,200 websites that have customized their websites using Dotgo," he said.
One of the latest companies to sign on with Dotgo has been Foursquare, Lanzetta said. Foursquare is a social networking site that allows users to share their location with friends.
"Foursquare customized Dotgo to be exactly like their smartphone app," said Lanzetta, who teaches physics and astronomy.
Still, Gromoll said Dotgo can be difficult for users unfamiliar with text messaging systems to understand.
"We call it the Internet for text messaging," he said. "It's kind of a new concept, and the best way for people to get a sense of how it works is to try texting with it."
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