Teleflip, a Los Angeles-based start-up that allowed you to send SMS messages to one and all has flipped for the final time, according to an email sent by the company to its customers. Teleflip Tony David wrote:

We’ve gone as far as we can with our financial resources, and the piggy bank is empty. Effective Friday, August 15, 2008, at 9:00AM Pacific Daylight Time, Flipmail will no longer be operating for either public or private use, and will be turned off at that time. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you, however our other popular email to text service, Flipout, will remain functioning.

I have emailed Davis to find out the details. Teleflip that got going in 2003, received a lot of publicity in the New York Times, PC Magazine and several other publications, mostly because it allowed non-smart phones to get email via SMS. The company started off as a simple email-to-SMS service running out of founder Guy Botham’s bedroom. In August 2006 they raised an undisclosed amount of money from GRP Partners in LA, and made Davis the CEO.

Checkout their Wikipedia page. Alec Saunders shares his thoughts on the shutdown of the service, pointing out that as smart phones become commonplace, the need for a Teleflip type service isn’t necessary. We first wrote about the company in March 2007 when they launched at DEMO 2007.

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