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Twilio Announces MMS Support
- madsushi 13y agoCanadians and US Short Code owners get all of the cool toys (for now, at least). I have been waiting for Twilio MMS for at least a year, but it looks like I have to wait a bit longer (or get into the beta).
- RobSpectre 13y agoI definitely hear you. We want it as badly as you do - can't wait to get them in your hands.
- 404error 13y agoDid anyone find the pricing for MMS on their site?
- mfenniak 13y agoReliable Pricing: Send pictures for 2¢/message and receive pictures for just 1¢/message. Storage: Store 5GB of pictures you send and receive for free, then just 20¢ per additional GB.
- 404error 13y agoThanks, I scanned over that section and missed it.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago20 cents a GB? ick.
- mfenniak 13y agoThat is a pretty steep rate, but I figure you'd treat their storage like an "INBOX" and grab images through the API and put it into your own persistent storage. So, the 5GB free component should probably cover a good number of use-cases.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoI guess. Still feels like you're getting gouged when you know they're getting discounted S3 storage rates based on their utilization.
- RobSpectre 13y agoFully heard and appreciated. Obviously, the storage of this media does have real cost, but feedback on the pricepoint is helpful. Thank you.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoThanks Rob. I understand you have costs, but with both compute and storage prices plummeting, it stands out when you have an outlier like that.
- kordless 13y agoThey wrote the code, run the servers, pay for the storage, pay the telcos, pay the employees, have investors who want a return on their money, etc., etc.. In other words, they have actual costs associated with providing a needed service to those of us who don't want to implement it ourselves.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoSo I can't have the opinion that their price for something is exorbitant just because they're a business that has costs? What world do you live in?
- sologoub 13y agoThink of this as a 5GB cache :)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- earlz 13y agough. Only on shortcodes for US.. That means extremely expensive to try out :(.. A short code is $3,000 every 3 months
- RobSpectre 13y agoWe wanted very badly to get this to you as well - it'll be released as soon as we can.
- sv123 13y agoAre we talking < 6 months or > 6 months?
- josh2600 13y agoWhere's Rob Spectre at when you need him!! So many questions. 1) Does Twilio own an MMSC? How did access happen? This is no easy feat. 2) How does signaling work? MMS is an incredibly rich format and can do a ton of stuff SMS can't. 3) I'd love to hear the backstory on how this went down. I imagine this is multiple years of work coming together. Yeah, I'm a telecom nerd and I know how politically difficult this is to achieve. Incredibly impressed if this is real MMS. That's one of the carrier grails, so getting that exposed is awesome. Would love to hear more if possible!!
- knodi 13y ago+1 to this. Make it happen twilio.
- sunsu 13y agoIts definitely real! They officially support Images, but will accept (and pass along) lots of other formats: https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/rest/accepted-mime-types https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/rest/accepted-mime-types
- keithwinstein 13y agoSerious question from a non-telecom nerd: Who benefits from designing a protocol and network for exchanging multimedia messages that makes it "politically difficult" for new entities to participate, and requires years of work plus owning an "MMSC," which you make sound difficult? From an Internet point of view, it seems obvious that the value of this protocol and network grows with the number of participating entities. We've understood this since the days of fax machines and Metcalf's law. I assume the competition here is MIME e-mail with picture/video attachments, which is implemented most places and works pretty well and doesn't take years of work. If you make your own protocol hard for others to join, you're more likely to lose. (Just as the Information Superhighway and OSI protocols lost in the 1990s to the underdog Internet.) What are the upsides to doing it this way?
- RobSpectre 13y agoTruthfully, my personal track record for predicting protocol success isn't particularly good. There is an old essay on gopher's "resurrection" that I really hope no one is able to find anymore. All I know is that a whole lot of our customers asked for it, so we built it. Took us a long time, but I'm very stoked for the response developers are giving us at Twiliocon.
- drivebyacct2 13y agoWhen will this include Group Messaging? The second it includes Group Messaging I will migrate from Google Voice. Besides the fact that Hangouts is likely to swallow Google Voice, I'm tired of no MMS/GroupMessage support.
- sologoub 13y agoCongrats! Like @josh2600 said, no small accomplishment! Any plans for US phone number (as opposed to just shortcode) support for sending/receiving MMS?
- RobSpectre 13y agoWe are working very hard to bring this service to US phone numbers - we want it as badly as you. For now, we have it on US short codes and Canadian phone numbers.
- RobSpectre 13y agobtw - Thanks! We worked really hard on it.
- justincormack 13y agoMMS died years ago. Terrible technically and never actually worked the four times in someone tried to send one.
- natrius 13y agoAs a Google Voice user who gets to experience life without MMS support, I can tell you that MMS is very alive. I've missed several social engagements that people coordinated via group texts, and a couple of sensitive images that had to be resent over email after the sender was perplexed by my silence...
- toomuchtodo 13y agoI suggest Whatsapp. Has group texts, also supports sexting via images sent over data (and video!).
- reustle 13y agoI have my primary number through google voice and I just get a sms saying "MMS Received" and then I get an email with a picture attachment. Not sure about group texts though.
- ybot 13y agoThis has only ever been true for MMS received from Sprint users. Google Voice & Sprint's current FAQ indicates that MMS no longer works, even on Sprint [1]. [1] https://support.google.com/voice/answer/1205636?hl=en https://support.google.com/voice/answer/1205636?hl=en
- evilduck 13y agoBeing subscribed to cat facts is about to get 100x more awesome.
- RobSpectre 13y agoOh biscuits.
- JSadowski 13y agoSadly, it doesn't look like they support group messaging. That would be a killer feature.
- RobSpectre 13y agoThanks for that feedback - we wanted to get Picture Messaging out of the door as soon as we had it before attacking the wealth of other features MMS has to offer. Really hope you enjoy it and check in often as we support more stuff.
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- webology 13y agoI was really excited until I realized (like others here) that MMS only works with US short codes and Canadian phone numbers. If anyone needs this functionality today then mogreet has an api but it works over a shared shortcode so you have to send a keyword with it. I am really looking forward to the day that Twilio or someone else supports MMS without the need of a short code.
- tzz 13y agoAfter so many years, Google Voice still doesn't support MMS. I am afraid Twilio will have the same issue dealing with the carrier partner in the US. I hope they support it soon but I am afraid it will be long.
- parfe 13y agoDoes this mean group messaging is available? I've missed out on a few events due to not receiving a group text to my google voice number. Is there a service that can replace google voice?
- THE_PUN_STOPS 13y agoI can relate, not being able to receive group texts is now my #1 issue with GVoice, since they've fixed most of the bugginess in the Android client.
- erikig 13y agoThis is great, I believe the only other feature I've been praying for is Premium SMS/MMS.
- wiradikusuma 13y agoHonest question, why you need MMS since everyone can just send multimedia via email/FB/Whatsapp/hundreds social messaging app? My experience with MMS has not be pleasant: slow, limited (low quality), unreliable (sometimes does not arrive or corrupted) and expensive (compared to "free" in email etc).