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I hear you. We all hate SPAM! In the US, short-codes are helpful for B2C SMS communication. US has many regulations on using a regular phone number for sending

by bevenky 13y ago

I hear you. We all hate SPAM! In the US, short-codes are helpful for B2C SMS communication. US has many regulations on using a regular phone number for sending SMS via Applications and APIs. For starters, a shortcode allows you to send 40 sms/second which is not allowed using a regular phone number. We have tried to document some of the differences and cases when a shortcode is helpful: http://plivo.com/faq/shortcode/what-is-the-difference-between-a-short-code-vs-a-long-code/ http://plivo.com/faq/shortcode/what-is-the-difference-betwee...

joosters 13y ago
You haven't answered the question. Why is someone going to be happier to receive SMS from a short number than from a long one?
- saurik 13y ago
  You didn't ask that question, nor did anyone claim that as near as I can see: only that there are clearly usages for sending text messages to users, and that short codes are better in at least some way (such as indicated here: sending large quantities is more easily possible). That said: I'll bite (in case anyone else reads your message and gets confused); as a user who deals with a bunch of services that send text messages (Bank of America, Equifax, AAA, Google, AT&T, UCSB, Pingdom...) I consider the ones where I get some random long number infuriating if the number isn't at least constant for me (as I can't add it to my address book), unprofessional (it would be as if someone hosted Apple's website on their Geocities account), and even "risky" (as the numbers are usually different for different carriers, and as mentioned even tend to randomly cycle, there's no reasonable way for me to know that it isn't someone playing a prank on me when I get the message; yes: SMS is somewhat spoofable, but replying to a short code, in my understanding, is not subject to those problems).
  - erichurkman 13y ago
    Hipchat is a notable service that seems to pick random phone numbers to send SMS notifications. It can get really confusing when they split notifications over multiple messages, and the carrier drops or delays the first message or two that tell you it's from Hipchat — subsequent messages do not indicate who it is from.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

by bevenky 13y ago

joosters 13y ago

You haven't answered the question. Why is someone going to be happier to receive SMS from a short number than from a long one?

saurik 13y ago
You didn't ask that question, nor did anyone claim that as near as I can see: only that there are clearly usages for sending text messages to users, and that short codes are better in at least some way (such as indicated here: sending large quantities is more easily possible). That said: I'll bite (in case anyone else reads your message and gets confused); as a user who deals with a bunch of services that send text messages (Bank of America, Equifax, AAA, Google, AT&T, UCSB, Pingdom...) I consider the ones where I get some random long number infuriating if the number isn't at least constant for me (as I can't add it to my address book), unprofessional (it would be as if someone hosted Apple's website on their Geocities account), and even "risky" (as the numbers are usually different for different carriers, and as mentioned even tend to randomly cycle, there's no reasonable way for me to know that it isn't someone playing a prank on me when I get the message; yes: SMS is somewhat spoofable, but replying to a short code, in my understanding, is not subject to those problems).
- erichurkman 13y ago
  Hipchat is a notable service that seems to pick random phone numbers to send SMS notifications. It can get really confusing when they split notifications over multiple messages, and the carrier drops or delays the first message or two that tell you it's from Hipchat — subsequent messages do not indicate who it is from.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]