Exciting (but old) News: Rediff invests in Vakow!

Now I can go about writing essays on what it means to Rediff (what’s with stock rise and all ;))and what we bring to the table and things like that, but for now, let’s just see what it means to us (anyway it’s much more interesting):

It means: Salaries! OMFG! We had almost forgotten what that means…no kidding! But now things shall resume to normal and self-respect shall ensue.

It means: We can have an office. We always wanted to have an office - nothing fancy - just a small cosy office with a really pretty secretary and a beer-loaded fridge.

It means: We can hire people. There’s no denying the fact that there is certain charm in a two people team working their asses off and kicking some real butt , but now we’ve really gotten bored arguing with each other and could do with some fresh brains around here.

It means: We can Just Buy it. e.g. When we need to make the website faster and we’re sick and tired of optimizing and optimizing and optimizing a bit more, I can shrug my shoulders, tilt my head and tell amitu, very matter of factly, “JUST GET ME MORE MACHINES!”.

And, we’ll have more visibility in terms of users, advertisers and partners which could only be useful and whenever we need good advice we know who to call.

That’s pretty much it I guess. Otherwise, life goes on. We’ll continue to operate in our style and do things that fancy us in ways that we find interesting.

Most importantly, all this money doesn’t change us a bit. We still love very much!

This could have easily been called Version 2.0 of Vakow! but it sounded too lame. Even with a ”2.0″.

Having struggled with the nomenclature for about 30 seconds and rejecting every suggestion that came up, we decided to cut corners and give you the real gravy - quick and fast.

Here’s what you’ll see in Vakow! now:

No requirement of +2 score to send SMS to your subscribers followers

Now we’ll send out SMSes to all your subscribers followers as soon as you post them. This will enable our users to post a variety of content ranging from a random thought, a movie review, a stock update or an sms forward that will be forwarded to his or her subscribers followers.

Go on, post something to your blog >>

Free Personal SMS to any phone in India

You can send personal SMSes (upto 140 chars) to any mobile phone in India, for FREE! All the SMSes that you send or receive through Vakow! are stored in your Personal Messages Inbox, and when you use it, the phone numbers get added to your address book automatically.

Send a free personal SMS >>

Receive up to 100 SMSes per day now

Now you can receive upto 100 SMSes from Vakow! per day - upto 50 SMSes from the people and tags that you are subscribed to follow and upto 50 personal SMSes from your friends.

Of course, if you don’t want to receive or want to receive less SMSes, appropriate controls are provided in your SMS Settings section.

Non-registered users can receive upto 5 SMSes per day. This should be great for sending those “how you doing mom?” messages (you know moms don’t sign up very easily).

Comment from mobile

Now you can also comment on any SMS that you receive from your friend from your mobile phone the moment you receive it.

Here’s the format: Send c username your comment to 99015 54321

e.g. To comment on kowboy’s latest sms, I’ll send c kowboy i like ur sms to 99015 54321

Simplified Mobile Commands

To post an SMS now you can just send it to our 10 digit non-premium number: 99015 54321 (without adding ‘p’ to it).

Earlier, to post: p i love vakow to 99015 54321
Now, to post: i love vakow to 99015 54321

Also, instead of “Subscribe/Sub”, we’ll be using “Follow”, which has become a sort of worldwide acceptable term for the action.

For other mobile commands, please have a look at the mobile cheat sheet.

PS: All previous mobile commands will continue to work as well.

And, we have made a bunch of design and usability improvements that we sincerely hope you’ll notice and appreciate.

Like always, our email line is open to you, please please please do write to us at feedback at vakow dot com with your feedback, suggestions, queries and complaints.

Have fun!

and may remain so for next 30 mins. More later.