Users of Whatsapp, Wechat, Line and Telegram or equivalent, would have known that they can create chat groups for notification. These are nevertheless, for informal groups or personal closed groups such as families and friends.
They can be useful for businesses but up to a certain extend. For example, if a company wants to notify every member of a new event, they may create a Whatsapp group with all their members. There is a restriction on number of members but this is a minor problem. A more serious issue is confidentiality. You may have noticed that a member can see the tel, description or name and picture of every other member. In a business point of view, you are disclosing the tel of all your members, in particular to your competitors. Moreover, if each were to make a comment, your phone will be ding ding dong dong for hours.
Businesses can also opt for emails which is free but people are more likely to use their phones to read messages than to read emails. Sometimes, it got into the spam folder too. Email is also a pull technology.
SMS (Short Message System) is push technology but can cost up to 5 cents per message. Some SIM cards have thousands of free SMS per month and even unlimited ones too. SMS is limited basically to characters and short messages.
What we have developed and to be proposed to businesses is an App-based Notification App. It is a one-way notification similar to radio transmission. That way, your message will not be flooded by comments. Users read and respond to whatever ways dictated by the sender. There can be images for presentation, links to form filling, link to PDF or website for more info, link to email or phone number for convenience.
This App is intended for use by any business therefore, users don’t have to load multiple apps for each notification. Other useful features is the ability to know who had read the notification. A very critical component in this App is that a public subscriber will remain anonymous even to the developer or the businesses but he can selectively choose to be known to the businesses.