This doesn’t feel like something Apple would approve of. Are you concerned about them shutting this down?
That is the platform risk. Apple blocked Beeper.com for the same reason.
Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
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Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#12What is your plan to prevent spam from bad actors? How do you ban bad actors so they can't spam again? Does a user have to initiate contact in order to have messages sent to them?
1. Since we're not fully self-serve right now, we can choose to only partner with businesses with use cases that are opt-in and non-spam.
2. If we find that one of our customers is using this for spam, we'll reach out to them asap and determine next steps
3. Not necessarily. We support both inbound (user texts the phone line first) and opt-in outbound (we text the user first) use cases
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#13How does this work? Do you have an agreement with Apple to connect to their iMessage service? If you do then kudos thats a real differentiator.
However if you're hosting your own mac mini farm and running bluebubbles or other such things that are not approved by Apple what is your plan to handle the case where you're sending enough traffic through Apple's services that they disable / ban / block you?
If its the former then awesome but if its the latter then Im not sure I'd want to depend on your service knowing that apple could ban you at any time.
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#14This doesn’t feel like something Apple would approve of. Are you concerned about them shutting this down?
That is the platform risk. Apple blocked Beeper.com for the same reason.
Apple doesn't inherently prohibit programmatic messaging. In fact, they actually developed Applescript for people to do that. What they are against is spam and abuse. Therefore, as long as we stay compliant and prevent spam, Apple is not necessarily against this.
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#15How is this any different then
https://blooio.com/ https://www.sendblue.com/ https://www.lindy.ai/ etc?
I will say I am the exact opposite of your market, I want absolutely nothing like this. In fact I'd prefer iMessage to allow ZERO programmatic interfacing.
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#16As much as I want to applaud your progress here, as a user I want transactional stuff to stay in my email inbox. My iMessage is already starting to become overwhelming from spam and apps — I want fewer messages not more.
Yeah I agree. Our goal behind this is not to clutter up people's iMessage inbox with more transactional messages. It's to replace the SMS/RCS conversations that people are already having with customer service and scheduling agents with something more conversational and human.
My existence couldn’t possibly be any more digital, and I can’t remember a single time I’ve had a SMS/RCS conversation with customer service or a scheduling agent. I don’t want to have one either. My message inbox is already full enough.
My iMessages are for conversations with people that I actually want to talk to. The notifications are high priority because it’s with people that I want to talk to.
I can’t imagine my annoyance if I were to receive an iMessage notification while I’m expecting an important message, only to find that it’s more spam.
My email inbox is already a wasteland because of this. The absolute last thing I need or want is for the same thing to happen to iMessage.
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#17This doesn’t feel like something Apple would approve of. Are you concerned about them shutting this down?
This is definitely going to get banned, and as a customer of Apple’s, I will be glad for it. I don’t need more iMessage spam.
We're not encouraging spam with this. We're mainly focused on existing conversational use cases that's currently done over SMS/RCS. They can be more human and expressive when done over iMessage.
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#18As much as I want to applaud your progress here, as a user I want transactional stuff to stay in my email inbox. My iMessage is already starting to become overwhelming from spam and apps — I want fewer messages not more.
Yeah I agree. Our goal behind this is not to clutter up people's iMessage inbox with more transactional messages. It's to replace the SMS/RCS conversations that people are already having with customer service and scheduling agents with something more conversational and human.
Why is iMessage "more conversational" than RCS? and "more human"??
I don't get the distinction you're making. I'm not an expert in mobile messaging so maybe I am missing something obvious.
And what about WhatsApp?
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is definitely going to get banned, and as a customer of Apple’s, I will be glad for it. I don’t need more iMessage spam.
We're not encouraging spam with this. We're mainly focused on existing conversational use cases that's currently done over SMS/RCS. They can be more human and expressive when done over iMessage.
For iPhone only users, so right off the bat your product is targeting 50% ish of a companies customer base. And the non iMessage people get a worse experience?
Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
#20How does this work? Do you have an agreement with Apple to connect to their iMessage service? If you do then kudos thats a real differentiator. However if you're hosting your own mac mini farm and running bluebubbles or other such things that are not approved by Apple what is your plan to handle the case where you're sending enough traffic through Apple's services that they disable / ban / block you? If its the forme…
Apple wouldn't ban us since we're not doing anything that would qualify as spam or abuse. Even if that hypothetical event does happen, we have SMS/RCS fallback systems in place so no conversations get stopped or lost