This was done by a cute little program on the PC and a the standard HTML3 browser we created of the Z5 (and other phones). In those days a little bit of a security breech but the idea was sound. Once we added secure browsing the security hole was somewhat smaller.

Parental thoughts

"if you had the choice to tell your mom that your company makes it easy for 800 million people to talk to each other, or that your business makes it easier for companies like Chevron to do business more productively, the former is going to sound a heck of a lot cooler."

Yet the latter would sound to them as if I was doing something productive and worthwhile rather than just enabling phone-obsessed street urchins to tell all of their "friends" that they are "like on the way home on the bus, and like there's so much traffic and then like she said that he said that she said" etc.

As someone once said, some of the smartest minds of our time are trying to work out the perfect advertising algorithm (or thereabouts).