San Francisco's penchant for passive-aggressive confrontation got a boost after a new service allowing one to text bad parkers was revealed late last year. It's called CurbTXT and it works like this: drivers can sign up by registering their license plates and phone numbers. The service will then give you a sticker for your car that allows other drivers to contact you via SMS text. This is perfect for challenged parking jobs, expired meters, or victims of smash-and-grab theft.
So far, the service is only available in San Francisco. Even the Board of Supervisors seem to like it as it doesn't cut into the city's slice of the bad-parking revenue pie. Opportunity Notes has more:
Since launch, in September of 2012, the service has been used to send “dozens” of warning messages, cofounder Ian Sotzing told me. That’s not all too terrible for a service that was launched in one small neighborhood by guys trailing parking officers and sliding flyers under windshields next to parking tickets, but it’s not exactly a rocketship of scalability.So when I was meeting with Ian, another cofounder, Alex Maxa, was meeting with people from the San Francisco board of supervisors, who, he later told me, were quite interested in the project. Alex tells me that the City doesn’t make revenue from towed cars (the towing company does), and that a service that made it possible to reach car owners before they are towed would be to everyone’s benefit (except the towing company). City support of CurbTXT would greatly help awareness and growth, and potentially provide a little revenue stream.
On the flip side, CurbTXT could also result in such bad behavior as widespread nagging, trustafarians sending angry notes to Lexus SUV drivers, and quite possibly even unwanted flirting. However, abuse of the system can result in user blocking. You also don't need a car or motorcycle to use CurbTXT. Anyone with a cell phone capable of sending text messages can use it.
For more information, check out CurbTXT.
[via CNET]