Congratulations to Tatango’s first payee, Pastor Chris of the Rescue Youth Church in Beaumont, Texas who just received his $20 check from our new, simple and easy-to-use Referral Program!

“I will tell you this. Other referral programs got on my nerves because if the person didn’t immediately click to buy something, and clicked to get other info or something, then decided to buy, I wouldn’t get the credit for it. So as long as we get the credit for the people we send your way, I love it. Easy money for me.” - Chris

To learn more, check out your Referral Page after logging in to your Tatango account: http://tatango.com/referrals.

Here’s how it works - We provide every Tatango account with a unique referral link, which can be shared via email, Facebook, Twitter, website, etc. For every person that creates an account and purchases a plan using your unique referral link, you’ll receive a check in the mail for $20 bucks (in just 5-7 business days!). It’s as simple as that.

To get started with our new referral program, simply log into your account and select the “Refer Tatango” tab. From there, you can begin sharing your link and begin making money for every person that signs up for Tatango using your link.

Enjoy everyone, this has been a long time in the making!

More kudos for Tatango! This blog post is a great, quick overview of the benefits of group SMS.

It also summarizes creative uses for upcoming 2010 campaigns. For instance, instead of potential voters passing by an important message in already overloaded inboxes, the chances are much higher that they’ll read the message if it’s sent via texting. This can be an advantageous avenue also if there are deadlines that need to be met, as texting offers instant connection, a potentially wider reader base, and simple, one-touch response from those receiving your message. Text messaging can also influence debates on talk radio shows, and bring more people to cast their votes.

Three services were researched and compared, and Tatango was heralded as the most efficient, “simple and affordable,” easy-to-use group messaging solution!

It’s time to put it out there - let’s set the record straight. We’ve polled everyone at the Tatango and Derek Media offices on the top 5 text messaging acronyms… in the world

So, without further adieu, below is our list of the top 5…

1. LOL - Laugh Out Loud
2. JK - Just Kidding
3. OMG - Oh My Gosh
4. BRB -  Be Right Back
5. TTYL - Talk To You Later

What are your top 5?

Youth Specialties provides a prime example of how the power of Tatango can be incorporated to better communication within youth ministries. Check out their case study below to see exactly what I’m talking about. If you’re having a hard time viewing the text in the embedded PDF, you can view a larger version of the case study here: .

Because of this, we’ve altered the plans page by removing “unlimited members” from the list of perks included with each plan, as it caused for confusion in accounting for the number of messages needed for each group. As you can see below, we also removed the trial plan from the row of pricing and placed a link to our free trial below the list of plans, along with an increased size to each plan.

Not only that, but we also added a “tooltip” to each piece of the plan, to better explain what each term meant. Simply hover over the various pieces on the “Plus” plan to see the tooltip.

We hope the change clears up some confusion! Please let us know if you have any feedback.

Old

New

Group communication is becoming increasingly difficult with the current mobilization of the world. People are on the move, making it hard to correlate schedules and share information. Several group communication giants have emerged in the form of Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. Facebook is currently the world leader with over 300 million users. Users can create group pages where members can post and view comments. Message strains can also be used to share messages within the group.

One of the problems facing web based social networking tools, is that people need to be on a computer, or using an Internet enabled phone with a social networking applications to view your post. Considering only 65 million Facebook users access the site from their phone, 235 million users are bound to the confines of computers. When considering there are currently more than 2 billion cell phones in the world, texting seems like a more viable solution to the group communication problem. Group texting through Tatango enables members to communicate instantly and seamlessly whenever and wherever they see fit.

When one considers the effectiveness of facebook as a procrastination tool, one would be less inclined to use it for group messaging. In essence, group members could potentially check their facebook for group updates and get sucked into hours of procrastination. This could detract from overall social production. Maximize productivity, increase effectiveness and mobilize your group by keeping them connected while on the go. Choose Tatango.

We are looking for a part-time engineer to assist with Tatango Group SMS development! Looking for Ruby on Rails experience and readiness to jump into a fast-paced, short dev cycle environment. Take a look at more details here and shoot us an email to jobs@tatango.com if you’re interested!

I did a post a couple of month’s back on the “Customer Love Effect” and the importance of it in building Tatango. Our view - the users, customers, clients or whatever you call the people who you do business are the number one priority, always. I think this is so important, because many businesses forget this and frankly don’t care to remember. For tips on how to transform your everyday customer service to “customer love”, view the post on my personal blog, here.