Ask HN: Switching my site's SMS capabilities over to Twitter. Good or bad idea?

5 points by bazookaaa 17 years ago | 6 comments

Hi HN, I'd like your input on something. My site allows people to add information to their account via email and SMS, and it also sends out notifications to email/SMS. I had an idea to completely replace my homemade SMS functionality with twitter.

Notifications (outgoing): Using email gateways for SMS is unreliable and only available to a few carriers. With twitter, my users would just have to provide their twitter username. My app would then send out a DM and they would get a text message from twitter.

Incoming: A simple "d soshiku [query]" sent to 40404 and that's it. My app doesn't actually offer "true texting" since they have to send their text to an email address.

The problem is, there's a couple thousand people with their phone credentials hooked up to their accounts. I would essentially have to force them to sign up with twitter if they'd like to continue using the SMS services.

Do you think this a good idea, or a foolish one? Thanks.

Edit: My site is free, though I am working on paid plans.

sachmanb 17 years ago |

this is quite an easy problem. it takes a short time to integrate twitter as an option, and then you can promote the idea on your site, and see if people switch, and how many people use them in conjunction. then if time doesn't tell you on it's own, if considerable number of people are using both, figure out some polite way to have them do a survey to scope out which one they use more.

in this way, assessing the risk of a complete migration will be possible, and you can make a more intelligent decision than you can today. something that disruptive could easily alienate your user base, and winning people back is perhaps even harder than winning them over the first time.

don't forget that twitter is unproven, there is ongoing speculation about if it is still a fad, and whether it can keep the average person's attention for longer than a few months. to bank on it against an established technology like SMS is too risky without more information. if twitter changes the landscape, the testing model will allow you to ride the wave, and if it doesn't, then you're still around when twitter fades.

ctingom 17 years ago |

Do your users pay to use your service? If they do, then there may be an assumption that that's your main feature and that's why people pay for it.

But if it's a free service I'd say go for it. In fact, I'd probably say go for it either way.

aitoehigie 17 years ago |

If you are not concerned about the geographical restrictions of twitters sms notifications then i guess little to worry about. You will be saving cost.

oconnor0 17 years ago |

I've found that Twitter SMSs don't always get to my phone. Anecdotally, I'd guess it's probably around a 5% drop rate.

nir 17 years ago |

Did you consider Textmarks? http://www.textmarks.com/

tracy 17 years ago |

Twitter is a bit of a niche app for this. I think more of your potential users would use facebook than twitter.