Providers of the sort of niche content to which Black refers are equally effusive about their future prospects.

One such content provider is Limbo 41414, which embeds its short code address in its name. After less than a year in operation, the company — which offers a hot new reverse auction offering — claims several hundreds of thousands of users per month.

“We want to occupy that time of day when you're not doing something important,” said Limbo CEO Jonathon Linner. “At any time we have 20 or 30 games going on where you can win anything from iPods and Tickle Me Elmos to Porsches.”

Games last anywhere from a few hours to more than a week, and the winner is the person who picks the lowest number that no one else picks. Participation is usually free (aside from airtime charges), with costs covered by sponsors as diverse as Proctor & Gamble and video game publisher Electronic Arts.

Advertisers are attracted to the offering because of the ability it gives them to influence users, Linner said. The average participant makes between 50 and 60 plays per game, according to Linner — and each play offers the advertiser an opportunity to send a text message response. In a game centered around Gillette's Venus razor, for example, a player texting the number 3 might get a message back saying, “That was a close shave. You got here second. Somebody already picked three. Want to play again?”

“Everything is user-initiated, so they pay a lot of attention to the messages there,” Linner said. Two percent of participants report purchasing featured products that cost more than $200, while another 49% reported that they were more likely to purchase the product, Linner said. “On the Internet, if you got a two percent click-through, you would be happy,” he added. “In this case, two percent are actually buying the product.”

Like “Deal or No Deal,” Limbo also is introducing new users to short message codes. “About half of the people who play had never text messaged prior to joining Limbo,” Linner said. “Their age bracket depends on the prize and how they're hearing about it. We gave away a trip to La Costa Spa on Lifetime, and the average age was mid-30s and mostly women.”

Although service providers do not earn revenue on Limbo promotions beyond airtime charges, those charges can add up. “Carriers typically make millions of dollars a year on our text services from standard carrier fees,” Linner said. Recognizing that, he said Sprint and Cincinnati Bell have begun promoting Limbo — and he speculates that airtime charges may have been one of the reasons Sprint and Virgin Mobile recently launched short message contests of their own. “They win in two ways,” he said. “They're happy to get more people to send more text messages. And a service that gets people who haven't used text messages before is exciting, and customers will look favorably on them for doing it.”