Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Introducing Our Ridiculously Simple Twilio SMS API

blog.twilio.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 45 posts

Re: Introducing Our Ridiculously Simple Twilio SMS API

#21

Post by djb_hackernews »

emcooke wrote: post #15
decadentcactus wrote: post #11

This looks excellent, although at the moment I can't think of a use aside from notifications (which is awesome either way). But you NEED to go after sms payments. They're horrendous at the moment and completely unusable for most people because of the high fees. I'm really hoping some startup can tackle it and turn it into a viable payment solution.

You might check out http://venmo.com/ They have a dead simple SMS payments platform. -evan (@twilio)

I wonder how they do send payment sans venmo account. According to their info page it can be done with just a cellphone...

Re: Introducing Our Ridiculously Simple Twilio SMS API

#22

Post by zackattack »

I'm going to have fun writing my contest entry.

Check out [http://www.twilio.com/docs/quickstart/sms/tracking-conversat...]. It says that the session variable is stored as the context between two numbers. Is that a unique pair, or is it a direction pair?

In other words, is the $_SESSION between $_REQUEST['From']=='Zack' && $_REQUEST['To']=='HN' the same as the $_SESSION between $_REQUEST['From']=='HN && $_REQUEST['To']=='Zack?

If that's the case, then the example provided in your documentation is flawed, because you're saying:

A) has messaged times

When you really mean

B) has messaged OR BEEN MESSAGED BY times

Re: Introducing Our Ridiculously Simple Twilio SMS API

#24

Post by jeffiel »

zackattack wrote: post #22

I'm going to have fun writing my contest entry. Check out [ http://www.twilio.com/docs/quickstart/sms/tracking-conversat... ]. It says that the session variable is stored as the context between two numbers. Is that a unique pair, or is it a direction pair? In other words, is the $_SESSION between $_REQUEST['From']=='Zack' && $_REQUEST['To']=='HN' the same as the $_SESSION between $_REQUEST['From']=='HN && $_REQUEST['…

Hi Zackattack,

It's bi-directional... ie, cookie state for the conversation. But in the quickstart, if you think about it... you only increment the counter once for the received message and the reply that the script is going to send, so the counter works out correctly. You had us thinking for a few minutes there :)

-jeff @twilio

Re: Introducing Our Ridiculously Simple Twilio SMS API

#25

Post by jsm386 »

bhousel wrote: post #23

Very cool. This would be even better with shortcode support.. The FAQ simply says "not available at this time". Does anyone know if there's a time frame for that feature?

I am impressed with what Twilio is doing here. However, if you'd like to send via a short code (no setup fees, delays, etc - using a shared shortcode), you can check out our developer center @ http://www.eztexting.com/developers

We also allow your customers/clients/whoever to interact via keywords on the shared shortcode (313131 in the US / 393939 in Canada)

Re: Introducing Our Ridiculously Simple Twilio SMS API

#27

Post by zackattack »

jeffiel wrote: post #24
zackattack wrote: post #22

I'm going to have fun writing my contest entry. Check out [ http://www.twilio.com/docs/quickstart/sms/tracking-conversat... ]. It says that the session variable is stored as the context between two numbers. Is that a unique pair, or is it a direction pair? In other words, is the $_SESSION between $_REQUEST['From']=='Zack' && $_REQUEST['To']=='HN' the same as the $_SESSION between $_REQUEST['From']=='HN && $_REQUEST['…

Hi Zackattack, It's bi-directional... ie, cookie state for the conversation. But in the quickstart, if you think about it... you only increment the counter once for the received message and the reply that the script is going to send, so the counter works out correctly. You had us thinking for a few minutes there :) -jeff @twilio

Cool, thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

To clarify, the API/platform supports the following two scenarios:

1) You make an HTTP POST to the SMS resource 2) Twilio automatically sends out a text message, and simultaneously does a GET/POST of your script, and $_REQUEST contains "From", "To", and "Body" keys

AND

1) Your Twilio phone # receives a text message 2) Twilio automatically pings your script, and inside the ping, $_REQUEST contains "From", "To", and "Body" keys. The value of the "To" key is always your Twilio phone number. (Unless you have multiple Twilio #s, I suppose).

Re: Introducing Our Ridiculously Simple Twilio SMS API

#28

Post by danielle17 »

matthewer wrote: post #26

Keep in mind that you can only send one message every second. That is a pretty low throttle. If your service were to take off you would probably need to switch to a bigger aggregator.

To be clear, the throttle is 1 message per minute per phone number (which is $1/month), not per account.

-danielle (@twilio)

Re: Introducing Our Ridiculously Simple Twilio SMS API

#29

Post by johns »

danielle17 wrote: post #28
matthewer wrote: post #26

Keep in mind that you can only send one message every second. That is a pretty low throttle. If your service were to take off you would probably need to switch to a bigger aggregator.

To be clear, the throttle is 1 message per minute per phone number (which is $1/month), not per account. -danielle (@twilio)

Really? One per minute per number? That's a pretty big limitation.

Edit: I think Danielle just mistyped. From the FAQ: "Each of your Twilio SMS-enabled phone numbers can send SMS messages at a rate of 1 message per second. You can make requests to Twilio as fast as you like, and Twilio will queue the messages, releasing them at a rate of 1 message per second. It is not possible to adjust this rate."

Post reply on HN