SMS search tool Kwiry to shut down next week
SMS reminder tool Kwiry is shutting down, citing economic hardships. Also relevant: text message prices and improvements in smartphone-optimized search engines.
Kwiry, "the remind yourself to do a search about something later" company, is closing up shop next week. According to a company blog post, the service is shutting itself down due to "economic realities."
In the meantime, users are kindly being given the next 10 days to grab all their previous searches, which can be saved as a CSV file and exported into other reminder services.
I hate to see the site go, but it was a concept that was a hard sell to casual users. Aimed at users without smartphones (or data plans), it started out as a way to remember to do a search for something when back at a computer. In fact, it did the search for you. It then branched off into a reminder tool, and a quick way to add TV shows directly to your TiVo lineup or a movie to your Netflix queue.
Where there could have been some hope for the service is a reduction in the price of text messages. However, that's a trend that's been going in the other direction since 2005. Between that and the increasing saturation of smartphone users with data plans, the company was likely fighting an uphill battle and losing to traditional mobile-friendly search engines, or to free voice-powered search services such as GOOG-411 and Microsoft's Live Search 411.
Previously:
Forget about remembering with Kwiry's SMS-based social search tool
Forget-me-not service Kwiry adds photo nagging
Kwiry puts Netflix, Amazon in your pocket