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Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage

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Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage

#51

Post by icedchai »

garygao wrote: post #33
frumplestlatz wrote: post #28

> iMessage is intended for communicating with family and friends, and is not for conducting commercial activities or disseminating unwanted messages. iMessage misuse may result in service limitations. https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/messages/ Seems pretty damn clear.

We are not "disseminating unwanted messages". A lot of what we're doing (e.g. customer support or missed call text back) would be things that users would already be doing conversationally over iMessage.

You can't guarantee one of your customers isn't going to do that dissemination though, right? No spammer is going to sign up saying "I'm a spammer that just got banned from ! Can you guys help?"

Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage

#52

Post by john_strinlai »

garygao wrote: post #48
john_strinlai wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're not encouraging spam with this. what you encourage and what actually happens are two different things, though. gmail does not actively encourage spam, yet most spam emails i receive are from gmail addresses. you have to actively fight against malicious uses, like spam. "not encouraging" is nowhere near enough. what systems/processes/safeguards do you have in place to prevent abuse?

I agree. We're not completely self-serve right now, so we get to talk with each potential customer and learn about their use case before onboarding them onto the platform. This way, we can prevent use cases that involve spam or abuse.

>We're not completely self-serve right now,

"right now", which implies that you plan to move to self-serve. and obviously manually checking in on each and every customer is not sustainable if you scale.

do you do periodic checkups now? hoping nobody lies during onboarding is risky, in an already-risky endeavor. have you thought about anti-abuse systems for when you go self-serve?

Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage

#53

Post by dave_xt »

garygao wrote: post #39
dave_xt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol not true. Blooio also starts at $39 for shared and $98 for dedicated. Source: I'm the co-founder of blooio. https://blooio.com/

The $98 dedicated line is inbound only. A lot of our application comes in the form of warm, consented outbound.

We have that too for $195/line for 6+ lines. We also have a full API you can find it here :) https://docs.blooio.com

RCS fallbacks, Emoji reactions, typing indicators, even changing chat background

Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage

#54

Post by garygao »

satvikpendem wrote: post #44

Isn't this a direct violation of Apple's terms of service? You say you aren't spammy but at a certain point you will get banned. I'm not sure how YC funded this based on the platform risk alone but I guess these days they're throwing anything and everything at the wall.

We're helping to support conversational customer support agents that can help users better during off-hours and scheduling assistants that can interact with and understand user requests better than current models over SMS/RCS. This is definitely not just spam but instead the future of conversational 2-way messaging.

Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage

#55

Post by liamcardenas »

dave_xt wrote: post #53
garygao wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The $98 dedicated line is inbound only. A lot of our application comes in the form of warm, consented outbound.

We have that too for $195/line for 6+ lines. We also have a full API you can find it here :) https://docs.blooio.com RCS fallbacks, Emoji reactions, typing indicators, even changing chat background

do you support iMessage app payloads?

Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage

#56

Post by garygao »

dgellow wrote: post #41
garygao wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We work with our customers to make those messages consent-based and feel non-spam.

Could you elaborate? What does that mean in practice? So far what I’ve seen from your service seems to be yet another attempt at blurring the distinction between bots and human interactions, which is generally used for spammy content

We're working to bridge the interaction between humans and bots so that automated conversations feel more natural and comfortable for the end user. In circumstances where the user can't reach an actual human (e.g. off hours support), they're often faced with bots over SMS/RCS that feel non-conversational and therefore can't support them in the right way due to interface. We're working on building agents that can more comfortably interact with users during those situations.

Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage

#57

Post by aetch »

garygao wrote: post #17
frumplestlatz wrote: post #8

Earlier 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.

The last thing I want is an AI “thumbs up” or reaction over iMessage

Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage

#58

Post by garygao »

dgellow wrote: post #50
garygao wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And what would be the next steps? Would you block them from using your services, even if they are paying customers? Do you have agreements in place with your users to cover those situations? Is there a way for end users to report to you what they see as spam or unsolicited content? How do you monitor customers activity to determine if they are bad actors? You should have answers for those points if you want to build…

For prospective customers, we would most likely try to work with them to brainstorm use cases that are consent-based and non-spam. For current customers, if we do see that they're using our services for spam, we'll reach out to them asap.

Also, while we can't see the exact messages that our customers are sending due to encryption on our servers, we do know when a phone line is close to being banned from our health checks. When that happens, we'll reach out to our customers asap and learn more about what is going on.

Re: Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage

#59

Post by garygao »

PantaloonFlames wrote: post #18
garygao wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

iMessage is more conversational because it's what most people are used to using and seeing. People generally associate green bubble messages with spam/transactional messaging and blue bubble with trust. Additionally, iMessage also has additional features such as typing indicators and reactions (likes and loves) that makes the interface feel more conversational. WhatsApp could also be very conversational, but most people in the US use iMessage.
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