SMS and WAP to Find Nearest Starbucks

This week Starbucks rolled out a new SMS service which has gotten quite a bit of press. The process is simple, you send a SMS (aka text message) containting a postal code to 697289 (MySBUX) and you will receive back the nearest Starbuck's locations. Or, you could logon to www.starbucks.com from a mobile device (which forwards to https://mobile.starbucks.com/starbucks/) and you can use their new mobile store locator.

The applications are powered by our MapPoint Web Service for geocoding the postal code, finding the nearest locations and sending back the information to the device. As a part of the application we send back the store address, a clickable phone number for direct dialing and store attributes such as wifi available and drive thru locations. If you're on the mobile application, as opposed to the SMS app, you'll also get back a navigable map and step by step driving directions. Overall, the applications are very user friendly with minimal user entry - important for a mobile application. Plus, did you know we could integrate with mobile devices?? Well, we do. Starbucks is one of our many customers using our SOAP XML Web Service for mobile applications. Because MWS is SOAP XML it supports just about every platform integration scenario. Are you next?