That’s right, as of last week, anyone can now get a SayNow number for free. And you can use it however you’d like! i.e.

• To hear from people you may not know (but might want to know).
• To broadcast messages to people who want to hear from you - from your phone to theirs.
• To chat with and meet new people!

A SayNow number also lets the people who call your line send messages to each other (it’s like having a party on your line where all the people who like you can meet each other too. You don’t even have to make any formal introductions :-)

We hope you have fun with it. Definitely send us your feedback and let us know what we can do better!

As some of you guys know, we’ve been slowly rolling out a new feature that lets people take LIVE phone calls through their SayNow number whenever they want.

We’re calling it SayNow LIVE and letting a few people test it out right now. I think we’ll eventually turn it on for everyone but for all you fans out there, I just wanted to give you a few tips in case you call and the Jonas Brothers or Selena Gomez answers the phone.

Remember to BREATHE and TRY NOT TO SCREAM! Also, you have a better chance of getting through if

1. You’ve registered with SayNow and uploaded a photo.
2. You don’t leave crazy messages (unless they’re funny).
3. You leave good messages! You get bonus points if other fans favorite your message.

Good luck!

Okay you’ll have to be patient and listen for at least 35 seconds before it gets good, ’cause it’s GOOD.

Lil Fizz was the first musician to try our “Connect Live” feature which allowed him to call fans back when we were first getting started. In the conversation above, he tried out something new from us that lets fans ring his phone when he wants (without anyone having to give up their real number of course :)

After lots of requests from fans around the world, we’re finally starting to roll out international numbers for some of the artists on our service! (the Jonas Brothers, Soulja Boy, Selena Gomez, Katy Perry, and Bow Wow). We’re starting with the UK, France, Italy, and Spain and will be adding more countries soon if all goes well.

This means if you’re from one of the countries above, you can now call a local number to leave messages (and not get charged for a long distance call). Just visit an artist’s SayNow or MySpace page to find their number for your country. You can also listen to and connect with other fans around the world from your phone. Plus you’ll get notified whenever your favorite artist leaves a new message so you’ll always be the first to know what’s going on.

Here’s a message Selena Gomez left earlier this week welcoming all her international callers!

If you have an account on SayNow and want to make a REAL MEASURABLE IMPACT on this year’s presidential election, we’d like to help you get your fans to the voting polls. We can make this EASY by connecting your fans to a voter registration hotline of your choice (if you don’t know of any, we can recommend one).

All you have to do is:

• Tell your fans to register by pressing a key on their phone

All your fans have to do is:

• Press a key after listening to your message to be connected to the hotline.

GET IN TOUCH WITH US ASAP TO SET THIS UP FOR YOUR LINE. Send an email to may@saynow.com or vanae@saynow.com

Thanks!

UPDATE: I’ll keep updating this list - here are some SayNow stars encouraging people to vote!

Brandon T. Jackson (10/8/08)

Cassie (10/3/08)

Donnie Klang (10/3/08)

Danity Kane (10/3/08)

Kevin Liles (10/3/08)

Bow Wow on his Walk Across America (10/2/08)

Chamillionaire (10/2/08)

They were giving them out last night and if you got this message on your phone (and you lived near Myrtle Beach), then you could have been one of the lucky ones who got to see em!

Also, Menudo’s going to be using SayNow while they’re on the road to send photos from their phones to yours.

Yep that’s right, they’re gonna be their own paparazzi…so you’ll be getting ALL your Menudo goodness STRAIGHT FROM THE SOURCE. Here’s the first pic they sent.

Menudo’s SayNow Number: (305) 851-6454
Menudo’s SayNow Messages
Menudo’s MySpace

(the photo above is from Orlando Magic Kids Day in Florida…I found it on their MySpace. They look good, no? :)

Right now, you can get one!…for free!…and you don’t even have to dance like Chris Brown or give us your left kidney. Just tell us your SayNow username, your MySpace page or website, and why you’d like one. You do have to show us that you’re actually gonna use it with your fans or a group of friends, but that’s it.

Having your own SayNow number will make it super easy for people to send you voice messages and to get them from you - just tell them to call your SayNow number. No need to fuss with a flash widget or text a confusing code to anyone.

Also, whenever you want to send a message to all your fans, call your SayNow number from your cell phone and say what you want. You can also send personal replies and actually call your fans back while keeping your real number private.

We’re only offering numbers for a limited time and on a first come basis so let us know if you’re interested - send an email to loren {at} saynow.com.

Do you ever find yourself wanting to save a message you really like so you can listen to it again later on or play it for a friend? Well you can.

When you’re listening to a message on someone else’s SayNow page (or your own SayNow page), just click the “Favorite” button to add it to your list of favorites.

When you’re listening to a message you like on the phone just press 3 to favorite it.

You can find your favorites at the bottom of your SayNow page: http://www.saynow.com/yourusername.

Eventually you’ll be able to listen to your favorites on the phone too, but right now, you can only listen to them on the web…which means you need to sign up if you want to do that. Signing up is free and gives you lots of other options like email notifications (if you don’t want text messages) and much more!

We’re going to start doing some tests with text and voice advertising for a few of our broadcasters. If you’re interested in having advertising turned on for your line and helping us test, let us know.

Advertising is one way we’re hoping to keep the service free for broadcasters and listeners, but there are lots of things we haven’t worked out yet.

If you’re a fan of someone on SayNow who has advertising turned on, we also want to know what you think. Our hope is to deliver information that’s relevant and interesting to you and since we’re just starting, there may be some hiccups as we develop and tweak a system that does this. Let us know!!

For those of you who want to know how many fans you have on SayNow, we’ve recently implemented a new feature that lets you find out on your phone. Just send a text message to 729669 (SAYNOW) with the word stats in the body of the message and we’ll send you a message that looks like the following (except with your numbers inserted)

Fans: 11241. New fans since last bcast: 1121. Last bcast listened to 11014 times.

The first number tells you how many fans you have (the total number of people who’ve called or left you messages). The second number tells you how many new fans have signed up for your broadcasts since your last one and the third number tells you how many times your last broadcast was listened to.

This is a message that Fantasia sent to one of her fans back in May. We think it’s pretty sweet, so we wanted to share it. She’s one of the few artists who actually used our Reply Feature a lot to respond individually to her fans!

If you want to do the same, just press 2 while listening to a message and you’ll be able to record something for the person who sent it.

Recently we’ve been working on message pages for all of you to make listening to and moderating messages on the web a lot easier. We’ve got a preliminary version of this page up which lets you see all your incoming SayNow voice and text messages as well as your sent messages.

Not to worry though, only messages that you mark “public” will show up on this page - if your default preference for all your messages is “public,” then they’ll all show up.

Here are message pages for some of our top users.

• Soulja Boy
• Lil Fizz
• The Jonas Brothers

You can also see your own page via the following url (just replace “yourusername” with your actual SayNow username or the username of an artist you’re interested in).

http://www.saynow.com/yourusername

Features that haven’t been implemented yet but are forthcoming include the ability for everyone to

• Favorite messages you like (and easily listen to those favorites on the phone as well as on the web)
• Listen to your most popular messages
• See your fans / subscribers – we’ll make it easier for you to block the ones you don’t want to hear from and give “superfan” privileges to your favorite ones.
• Mark a message as inappropriate (your fans can help you weed out the trolls)

Let us know what you think of what we’ve got so far and where we’re going. We want to make sure we end up in the right place!

So, hands down the number one support request we get from everyone who calls or emails us at SayNow is “Can you tell _________to call me back?” (insert any one of our artists in the blank) We hear this almost everyday, so a couple weeks ago we started experimenting with a feature that lets you press a button while listening to a message on your phone and connect LIVE to the person you’re listening to. The other person’s phone will ring but no one’s phone number will be revealed in the process.

Lil Fizz, one of the first major artists to use SayNow, tested this with a couple of his fans. Truth be told, it wasn’t a smooth process…some of his fans were a little shocked…and speechless. Literally speechless. In one case, a fan’s father answered the phone. That was kind of awkward.

After a couple mistarts, we’re happy to report that Lil Fizz finally connected with by far his BIGGEST fan on SayNow, Ms. Giggles (who’s left him hundreds of messages). I’m not gonna even tell you how many she left after this.

Anyways, we’ve still got some kinks to iron out and plan on coming up with ways for fans to help decide who gets a call back. If you’ve got some suggestions for us, let us know!

oh and if you want to give Lil Fizz a call, here’s his number: (415) 944-8370

…because now, you can preview a message you’ve recorded before sending it off. Just press the pound (#) key after recording to listen to your message and then press 1 to send it or press 2 to scratch what you’ve recorded and start over.

Given that it takes me at least 3 tries just to get my voicemail greeting right, I’m pretty psyched about this new feature.