8 ms·

Show HN: Add “Magic” to Your Business

84 points by MatthewB 12y ago

MatthewB 12y ago
hey all - matt from Sonar here. happy to answer any questions. you can offer Magic-like service to your customers within minutes with Sonar.
- NiklasPersson 12y ago
  So why not use, like, "web messages"? I heard about this thing called HTTP, seems pretty cool. Any opinions?
  - MatthewB 12y ago
    do you mean webchat? that's a good option as well but to build something as simple and awesome as Magic, text messaging is the way to go
    - NiklasPersson 12y ago
      yeah no, I mean like literally let the user insert a message through a form, like <input type="text">, that thing you know? And then you could, like, save that. Just save that data. And read it. And respond. Something like that. THEY ARE ON A BROWSER. Am I crazy here? Please, anyone? What year is this? Where am I?
      - gk1 12y ago
        You seem to be very confused (or trolling). This is about SMS, not an in-browser chats.
      - freehunter 12y ago
        What do you mean they're on a browser? The purpose of Magic is to be able to hold the entire interaction with a text message. No browser involved.
      - primitivesuave 12y ago
        Just so you (person who is new to HN) understands why your comment is downvoted here - HN is more of a community for providing constructive feedback. Read the other comments on this post to get practical examples. If I posted something I had poured my heart and soul into for months/years and had to deal with sarcastic vitriol from someone who completely misses the point of what I'm trying to accomplish, I wouldn't feel comfortable posting my work here. I'm personally very grateful there is a community like HN where negativity and closed-mindedness is grayed out.
  - gettingreal 12y ago
    you probably ignore emails all day, How often do you ignore text messages?
  - jsmthrowaway 12y ago
    I heard about this thing called discussing your opinion directly instead of schoolyard passive aggression. It'd be awesome if we all did it. Thoughts?
  - jimlei 12y ago
    I actually do like this concept. I've always found it cumbersome that online support is a live session where either one of you can get disconnected at any time, or that you might get occupied and can't finish the session there and then. Sonar easily solves that, while giving me the possibility to just pick up "messages" on my phone and ask them something out of the blue later on.
- klochner 12y ago
  why would someone choose sonar over twilio?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - klochner 12y ago
      As a spokesperson of the company you may want to avoid a defensive tone. Let me translate that into something friendlier for you: "At Sonar, we offer a drop-in javascript widget so you don't have to write code. Twilio is a more low-level solution." [edit] Thanks Matt, that's what I was looking for.
      - vishaldpatel 12y ago
        My bad. Thanks, Matt!
      - MatthewB 12y ago
        Yep. Sorry didn't mean to come off as defensive, just trying to respond to everyone quickly:)
  - MatthewB 12y ago
    great question. the main reason to use Sonar over twilio is that you'd have to essentially build our platform to be able to offer service like Magic. You need to be able to quickly send and receive text-messages through a web-UI (otherwise it becomes cumbersome to do it on a phone). we built that entire product already and it handle large volumes of messages from 10-digit numbers very well. with twilio, you just get the API. also, we're built on (and love) twilio:)
pothibo 12y ago
I really don't like this opportunistic BS. These guys yesterday struggled with their launch and you took that opportunity to tell the world how to build a better clone? Cheap shot & I hope someone did the same when you guys launched and I hope it made you struggle.
- gk1 12y ago
  I think it's brilliant. The original discussion about Magic included comments and questions about what's _powering_ it. For example, people wondered how the texts got routed, whether it's automated or manual, how fulfillment is done, etc. Clearly there was some curiosity about what powers these types of apps, as further evidenced by this post's frontpage status.
  - pothibo 12y ago
    It's nothing like you describe. They go to great length to say how they love Magic to turn around and tell the world how to do build a better clone. Did they write about the routing? No. They advertised their product piggybacking on a frontpage story. Look, if the same thing would happen but Magic would be an established company, I'd say it's brilliant, but it's not. And it matters.
    - stanmancan 12y ago
      How are they teaching someone to make a BETTER clone? All they're teaching is how to communicate via text message through a web interface. The method of communication isn't what makes Magic magic.
  - MatthewB 12y ago
    Exactly our purpose. We want to show other businesses how to do what Magic did (at least the texting piece). Execution is everything though.
- freehunter 12y ago
  The Internet is built around finding out how to make clones of technical implementations. Hell, half the world is built around that. Technical implementations are the easy part. The hard part is getting the entire business right, including sales and marketing and customer service. The 'magic' of Magic isn't how to read and respond to text messages from your PC, it's being able to navigate basically any third-party vendor imaginable to fulfill a customer's request. That can't be copied with a Twilio app.
RaphiePS 12y ago
I think this completely misses the point. The "magic" part of Magic isn't that it's over text -- that's just an implementation detail. Rather, the value is that it navigates all these services for you. You don't have to mess with Instacart or Postmates or Doordash or any specific app. You don't have to search or filter or download or re-enter your credit card a million times. It just happens. So, creating a single-business-specific Magic seems kinda useless.
- MatthewB 12y ago
  I believe a lot of the value is the simplicity of SMS. No logins, save the number in your phone and just text them like you would your friend with a request...done! You're right though, the aggregation is definitely a big part of it.
- alex_c 12y ago
  Well, there are two aspects to Magic... one is that it's versatile, the other is that it's low (close to zero) friction. Sonar seems to take care of the low friction part, I guess the versatility/usefulness is up to the business implementing it.
- digikata 12y ago
  The 'magic' of Magic isn't that unique either. It boils down to an open channel(s) to communicate with a personal assistant / concierge service. And I suspect that that calling a live person to describe the initial request seems much more expedient that bouncing texts or emails back and forth... Many companies already offer that kind of service, e.g. https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/benefits/detail/platinum-card-concierge/platinum https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/benefits/det... Oddly enough, my insurance company just started offering up that type of service too....
- Animats 12y ago
  Right. Ordering stuff over SMS isn't that great an idea. There's going to be a lot of back and forth - what size do you want, is it OK if your flight has a change of planes at DFW, do you want anchovies on the pizza? Sending an order for a bag of groceries via SMS is going to take a lot of typing. Processing the order is currently manual. You're back in the call center era. For the back and forth, you'd probably be better off using voice. As in, the customer calls the service on the phone. The big advantage of web ordering is that the user gets to browse the catalog and select. They can find out if it's in stock before they order. The order gets captured correctly and automatically. There's one central service for buying, and it's called Amazon.com.
nemo44x 12y ago
I feel like as an art piece, "Magic" is sort of the distillation and abstraction of everything that has happened with the Internet over the last 20 years - especially lately. "Send a blackbox a message and you get something - on demand!" That's art. Or it's an incredibly sad state of affairs with what qualifies as "technology" and is a horrible commentary on modern societies values. Or a reflection of it - imitating it I suppose. "Magic" & "Yo" - The future is bright.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  What are we supposed to value?
  - nemo44x 12y ago
    I'm not sure. That's the job of art to reflect upon our culture to let people judge for themselves. I find it brilliant, disgusting, tempting and shocking all at once. I'm not sure if it's a civilization in decline and on the eve of revolution or if it's a beautiful thing. You don't get an emotional response from just saying "Pizza" and a price comes back and you reply with a "Yes/No" and then it arrives? Where is the service that says "Pizza" and "Yes/No" for me? Clearly that's the only place the form can go. I guess it's the infantilization of society?
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      I tend not to order food, so the idea of making it easier didn't really resonate with me. I also tend to be a cheapo, so the idea of spending $4 extra also put me off. So my reaction to magic wasn't very strong. I also don't really see the difference in values between buying flour and making obtaining a pizza really easy. Why is buying flour okay, or dealing with the details of ordering pizza yourself okay, but handing off the last little bit of the pizza ordering is reflective of decay?
      - nemo44x 12y ago
        "Why is buying flour okay, or dealing with the details of ordering pizza yourself okay, but handing off the last little bit of the pizza ordering is reflective of decay?" I think it has to do with the fact that you surrendered choice in where this pizza comes from. You have no agency in the quality, labor conditions, ingredients, etc of the pizza. You have reduced your "freedom OF choice" to "freedom FROM choice". Devo was right.
dinisp 12y ago
Can you give some insight in how a business would capture unique payment info related to a phone # in Stripe? Is there a payment link sent to users?
- MatthewB 12y ago
  I don't know how they're doing payments exactly but if I had to guess they are recording a customer's credit card info to stripe and associate to a phone number somewhere. Since Magic says you need to send them your credit card and address info the first time you use their service, my guess is that they would have to record that info so next time you text message, they just look up your credit card by your phone number (probably not in stripe, most likely in a separate database they keep). They can associate your stripe customer id with your phone number so they don't have to store raw credit card numbers (let stripe handle that!).
  - jusben1369 12y ago
    I would think existing businesses would already have a payment processing relationship in place and so the challenge would be hooking it up to many of those choices (if they didn't have one then Stripe is a good default) The question is how is that card data getting from the text message into the payment processor in a PCI compliant manner? Once they get it from their SMS app into Stripe then Stripe will give them a token and they can map the token and phone number for future charges. But I wonder how it gets there in the first place. Again, due to PCI compliance, I expect the Magic guys are never seeing the actual card numbers. So they must be paying for services on their own cards and charging your card against their Stripe account. So there's some double CC processing fees happening and chargeback exposure. I suspect though the Magic guys just hacked this together (in a great way) and given the interest I hope they can raise and solve for some of the unscalable parts like this.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
folken 12y ago
So someone was watching too much "Eden of the East",Noblesse oblige. Explenation: In the animee there is a phone that can call a number which makes anything happen or done. You have a billion credit. Too bad you die if you use all the money.
etrautmann 12y ago
Minor edit: s/Below is out you get started/Below is how you get started
- MatthewB 12y ago
  thanks, updated.
comrade1 12y ago
Is this using a long code or a short code? The examples seem to show a long code, which is basically a phone number. The FCC is in the process of cracking down on companies that use long codes for marketing and interacting with customers. It's too amenable to fraud. You should be using short codes which have strict requirements for opting in, opting out, and restrictions on spam. If this is using long codes you are setting yourself up for fines and legal problems if you use this service.
- MatthewB 12y ago
  We use long codes. There's a distinct difference between marketing/spam and customer service/support. When a customer initiates the conversation via text, it is generally seen as an assumed opt-in. Our issue with short codes are that they are very expensive ($3000 setup fee and cost per text after that) and a 12 week approval process. That just doesn't work for our use case. The laws definitely need to be updated though.
- 300bps 12y ago
  Last I checked random short codes were $500 per month and vanity short codes were $1,000 per month. In the past I did mobile banking projects for large regional banks and of course a vanity short code is appropriate for that. For small businesses though I don't see the monthly fee, let alone the stringent approval requirements being feasible. I've also done many text projects for small businesses using Twilio with long codes. I sincerely hope the FCC would prioritize cracking down on scamming robocallers (a major nuisance) before they crack down on small businesses attempting legitimate communication with their customers.
  - MatthewB 12y ago
    Agreed about the FCC. For the $500/month short codes, were those unique or shared? Shared short codes don't work with 2-way communication (when someone replies, which business does it go to?).
    - comrade1 12y ago
primitivesuave 12y ago
It's really frustrating to me when a Show HN gets thrashed this way. Every developer puts love into what they build, and most of the people here are developers that hopefully feel the same way. Imagine how terrible it must feel to have your work responded to with such a harshly critical eye - what you're doing is making the opinions of HN more generally negative and more easily ignored, just as directors now ignore the overly critical tome of movie critics. This was a great demonstration of an interesting piece of technology, that has been met with an overwhelmingly negative response. It's designed really well and I can see it being especially useful for small businesses with a more personal approach to client management.
- joshmn 12y ago
  I couldn't agree more. I can only imagine the disconnect the author of this must feel. Author, whomever, this is great work. I can see it being very useful for certain applications. Really nice, well-written and simple ruby gem too :)
  - MatthewB 12y ago
    Thanks for the kind words:) Luckily, there weren't too many negative comments but I was happy to address their concerns. Can't make everyone happy (especially on the internet).
    - joshmn 12y ago
      To make this really interesting, have you thought about making plugins/addons for, say, SalesForce/WHMCS/ZenDesk? A plugin there could easily allow this thing to skyrocket.
- larrys 12y ago
  "Imagine how terrible it must feel to have your work responded to with such a harshly critical eye - what you're doing is making the opinions of HN more generally negative and more easily ignored, just as directors now ignore the overly critical tome of movie critics." What does "feeling" have to do with it? I can't agree with that. Criticism is valuable. You can't learn anything from a pat on the back as you can from criticism. That's not saying that some of the things aren't deserved. As an example I always get frustrated when the manager/owner of a restaurant walks around and says "is everything ok?" rather than "what can we do better or what wasn't perfect?" (in other words invite comments that may be negative). Enough with the attaboys. As far as HN what you typically can't learn from is downvotes without an explanation of why a downvote was received.
nemo44x 12y ago
I'm not sure that much thought has been put into this. Should probably work out the CEO/CTO titles first, figure out where to get funding for this clearly multi-billion dollar opportunity and begin to plan the exit immediately. "Lady luck please let the dice stay hot..."
- dang 12y ago
  This comment violates HN's rules about comments. Please read the guidelines and try harder to follow them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
curiously 12y ago
does twilio offer this sort of service? I have a toll free number and would like to offer text based replies.
- vishaldpatel 12y ago
  Not out of the box, no. Sonar makes use of Twilio in the back-end to provide all the front-end functionality that you see. As for porting your phone number over... a quick search found this: https://www.twilio.com/help/faq/phone-numbers/i-already-have-a-phone-number-i-love-can-i-port-it-to-twilio https://www.twilio.com/help/faq/phone-numbers/i-already-have... Feel free to send me an email: vishal@sendsonar.com.
curiously 12y ago
looks like they have real operators 24/7. how can you get those kind of operators, hopefully at low prices? odesk?
- vishaldpatel 12y ago
  A company that wants to operate 24/7 would need to hire for the night-shift. This would be based on demand, of course. Night-shift hours are probably lower since most customers go to sleep at night. I don't see why hiring evening and night staff would be that different apart from training. It's probably a bit more difficult to find people that want to work the night shift... some companies get around this by rotating staff between the day and night shifts regularly to give everyone a chance to lead a normal life.
benhov71 12y ago
It's not about technology but about service.

84 points by MatthewB 12y ago

hey all - matt from Sonar here. happy to answer any questions. you can offer Magic-like service to your customers within minutes with Sonar.

NiklasPersson 12y ago
So why not use, like, "web messages"? I heard about this thing called HTTP, seems pretty cool. Any opinions?
- MatthewB 12y ago
  do you mean webchat? that's a good option as well but to build something as simple and awesome as Magic, text messaging is the way to go
  - NiklasPersson 12y ago
    yeah no, I mean like literally let the user insert a message through a form, like <input type="text">, that thing you know? And then you could, like, save that. Just save that data. And read it. And respond. Something like that. THEY ARE ON A BROWSER. Am I crazy here? Please, anyone? What year is this? Where am I?
    - gk1 12y ago
      You seem to be very confused (or trolling). This is about SMS, not an in-browser chats.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      What do you mean they're on a browser? The purpose of Magic is to be able to hold the entire interaction with a text message. No browser involved.
    - primitivesuave 12y ago
      Just so you (person who is new to HN) understands why your comment is downvoted here - HN is more of a community for providing constructive feedback. Read the other comments on this post to get practical examples. If I posted something I had poured my heart and soul into for months/years and had to deal with sarcastic vitriol from someone who completely misses the point of what I'm trying to accomplish, I wouldn't feel comfortable posting my work here. I'm personally very grateful there is a community like HN where negativity and closed-mindedness is grayed out.
- gettingreal 12y ago
  you probably ignore emails all day, How often do you ignore text messages?
- jsmthrowaway 12y ago
  I heard about this thing called discussing your opinion directly instead of schoolyard passive aggression. It'd be awesome if we all did it. Thoughts?
- jimlei 12y ago
  I actually do like this concept. I've always found it cumbersome that online support is a live session where either one of you can get disconnected at any time, or that you might get occupied and can't finish the session there and then. Sonar easily solves that, while giving me the possibility to just pick up "messages" on my phone and ask them something out of the blue later on.
klochner 12y ago
why would someone choose sonar over twilio?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - klochner 12y ago
    As a spokesperson of the company you may want to avoid a defensive tone. Let me translate that into something friendlier for you: "At Sonar, we offer a drop-in javascript widget so you don't have to write code. Twilio is a more low-level solution." [edit] Thanks Matt, that's what I was looking for.
    - vishaldpatel 12y ago
      My bad. Thanks, Matt!
    - MatthewB 12y ago
      Yep. Sorry didn't mean to come off as defensive, just trying to respond to everyone quickly:)
- MatthewB 12y ago
  great question. the main reason to use Sonar over twilio is that you'd have to essentially build our platform to be able to offer service like Magic. You need to be able to quickly send and receive text-messages through a web-UI (otherwise it becomes cumbersome to do it on a phone). we built that entire product already and it handle large volumes of messages from 10-digit numbers very well. with twilio, you just get the API. also, we're built on (and love) twilio:)

pothibo 12y ago

I really don't like this opportunistic BS. These guys yesterday struggled with their launch and you took that opportunity to tell the world how to build a better clone? Cheap shot & I hope someone did the same when you guys launched and I hope it made you struggle.

gk1 12y ago
I think it's brilliant. The original discussion about Magic included comments and questions about what's _powering_ it. For example, people wondered how the texts got routed, whether it's automated or manual, how fulfillment is done, etc. Clearly there was some curiosity about what powers these types of apps, as further evidenced by this post's frontpage status.
- pothibo 12y ago
  It's nothing like you describe. They go to great length to say how they love Magic to turn around and tell the world how to do build a better clone. Did they write about the routing? No. They advertised their product piggybacking on a frontpage story. Look, if the same thing would happen but Magic would be an established company, I'd say it's brilliant, but it's not. And it matters.
  - stanmancan 12y ago
    How are they teaching someone to make a BETTER clone? All they're teaching is how to communicate via text message through a web interface. The method of communication isn't what makes Magic magic.
- MatthewB 12y ago
  Exactly our purpose. We want to show other businesses how to do what Magic did (at least the texting piece). Execution is everything though.
freehunter 12y ago
The Internet is built around finding out how to make clones of technical implementations. Hell, half the world is built around that. Technical implementations are the easy part. The hard part is getting the entire business right, including sales and marketing and customer service. The 'magic' of Magic isn't how to read and respond to text messages from your PC, it's being able to navigate basically any third-party vendor imaginable to fulfill a customer's request. That can't be copied with a Twilio app.

RaphiePS 12y ago

I think this completely misses the point. The "magic" part of Magic isn't that it's over text -- that's just an implementation detail. Rather, the value is that it navigates all these services for you. You don't have to mess with Instacart or Postmates or Doordash or any specific app. You don't have to search or filter or download or re-enter your credit card a million times. It just happens. So, creating a single-business-specific Magic seems kinda useless.

MatthewB 12y ago
I believe a lot of the value is the simplicity of SMS. No logins, save the number in your phone and just text them like you would your friend with a request...done! You're right though, the aggregation is definitely a big part of it.
alex_c 12y ago
Well, there are two aspects to Magic... one is that it's versatile, the other is that it's low (close to zero) friction. Sonar seems to take care of the low friction part, I guess the versatility/usefulness is up to the business implementing it.
digikata 12y ago
The 'magic' of Magic isn't that unique either. It boils down to an open channel(s) to communicate with a personal assistant / concierge service. And I suspect that that calling a live person to describe the initial request seems much more expedient that bouncing texts or emails back and forth... Many companies already offer that kind of service, e.g. https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/benefits/detail/platinum-card-concierge/platinum https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/benefits/det... Oddly enough, my insurance company just started offering up that type of service too....
Animats 12y ago
Right. Ordering stuff over SMS isn't that great an idea. There's going to be a lot of back and forth - what size do you want, is it OK if your flight has a change of planes at DFW, do you want anchovies on the pizza? Sending an order for a bag of groceries via SMS is going to take a lot of typing. Processing the order is currently manual. You're back in the call center era. For the back and forth, you'd probably be better off using voice. As in, the customer calls the service on the phone. The big advantage of web ordering is that the user gets to browse the catalog and select. They can find out if it's in stock before they order. The order gets captured correctly and automatically. There's one central service for buying, and it's called Amazon.com.

nemo44x 12y ago

I feel like as an art piece, "Magic" is sort of the distillation and abstraction of everything that has happened with the Internet over the last 20 years - especially lately. "Send a blackbox a message and you get something - on demand!" That's art. Or it's an incredibly sad state of affairs with what qualifies as "technology" and is a horrible commentary on modern societies values. Or a reflection of it - imitating it I suppose. "Magic" & "Yo" - The future is bright.

maxerickson 12y ago
What are we supposed to value?
- nemo44x 12y ago
  I'm not sure. That's the job of art to reflect upon our culture to let people judge for themselves. I find it brilliant, disgusting, tempting and shocking all at once. I'm not sure if it's a civilization in decline and on the eve of revolution or if it's a beautiful thing. You don't get an emotional response from just saying "Pizza" and a price comes back and you reply with a "Yes/No" and then it arrives? Where is the service that says "Pizza" and "Yes/No" for me? Clearly that's the only place the form can go. I guess it's the infantilization of society?
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    I tend not to order food, so the idea of making it easier didn't really resonate with me. I also tend to be a cheapo, so the idea of spending $4 extra also put me off. So my reaction to magic wasn't very strong. I also don't really see the difference in values between buying flour and making obtaining a pizza really easy. Why is buying flour okay, or dealing with the details of ordering pizza yourself okay, but handing off the last little bit of the pizza ordering is reflective of decay?
    - nemo44x 12y ago
      "Why is buying flour okay, or dealing with the details of ordering pizza yourself okay, but handing off the last little bit of the pizza ordering is reflective of decay?" I think it has to do with the fact that you surrendered choice in where this pizza comes from. You have no agency in the quality, labor conditions, ingredients, etc of the pizza. You have reduced your "freedom OF choice" to "freedom FROM choice". Devo was right.

dinisp 12y ago

Can you give some insight in how a business would capture unique payment info related to a phone # in Stripe? Is there a payment link sent to users?

MatthewB 12y ago
I don't know how they're doing payments exactly but if I had to guess they are recording a customer's credit card info to stripe and associate to a phone number somewhere. Since Magic says you need to send them your credit card and address info the first time you use their service, my guess is that they would have to record that info so next time you text message, they just look up your credit card by your phone number (probably not in stripe, most likely in a separate database they keep). They can associate your stripe customer id with your phone number so they don't have to store raw credit card numbers (let stripe handle that!).
- jusben1369 12y ago
  I would think existing businesses would already have a payment processing relationship in place and so the challenge would be hooking it up to many of those choices (if they didn't have one then Stripe is a good default) The question is how is that card data getting from the text message into the payment processor in a PCI compliant manner? Once they get it from their SMS app into Stripe then Stripe will give them a token and they can map the token and phone number for future charges. But I wonder how it gets there in the first place. Again, due to PCI compliance, I expect the Magic guys are never seeing the actual card numbers. So they must be paying for services on their own cards and charging your card against their Stripe account. So there's some double CC processing fees happening and chargeback exposure. I suspect though the Magic guys just hacked this together (in a great way) and given the interest I hope they can raise and solve for some of the unscalable parts like this.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

folken 12y ago

So someone was watching too much "Eden of the East",Noblesse oblige. Explenation: In the animee there is a phone that can call a number which makes anything happen or done. You have a billion credit. Too bad you die if you use all the money.

etrautmann 12y ago

Minor edit: s/Below is out you get started/Below is how you get started

MatthewB 12y ago
thanks, updated.

comrade1 12y ago

Is this using a long code or a short code? The examples seem to show a long code, which is basically a phone number. The FCC is in the process of cracking down on companies that use long codes for marketing and interacting with customers. It's too amenable to fraud. You should be using short codes which have strict requirements for opting in, opting out, and restrictions on spam. If this is using long codes you are setting yourself up for fines and legal problems if you use this service.

MatthewB 12y ago
We use long codes. There's a distinct difference between marketing/spam and customer service/support. When a customer initiates the conversation via text, it is generally seen as an assumed opt-in. Our issue with short codes are that they are very expensive ($3000 setup fee and cost per text after that) and a 12 week approval process. That just doesn't work for our use case. The laws definitely need to be updated though.
300bps 12y ago
Last I checked random short codes were $500 per month and vanity short codes were $1,000 per month. In the past I did mobile banking projects for large regional banks and of course a vanity short code is appropriate for that. For small businesses though I don't see the monthly fee, let alone the stringent approval requirements being feasible. I've also done many text projects for small businesses using Twilio with long codes. I sincerely hope the FCC would prioritize cracking down on scamming robocallers (a major nuisance) before they crack down on small businesses attempting legitimate communication with their customers.
- MatthewB 12y ago
  Agreed about the FCC. For the $500/month short codes, were those unique or shared? Shared short codes don't work with 2-way communication (when someone replies, which business does it go to?).
  - comrade1 12y ago

primitivesuave 12y ago

It's really frustrating to me when a Show HN gets thrashed this way. Every developer puts love into what they build, and most of the people here are developers that hopefully feel the same way. Imagine how terrible it must feel to have your work responded to with such a harshly critical eye - what you're doing is making the opinions of HN more generally negative and more easily ignored, just as directors now ignore the overly critical tome of movie critics. This was a great demonstration of an interesting piece of technology, that has been met with an overwhelmingly negative response. It's designed really well and I can see it being especially useful for small businesses with a more personal approach to client management.

joshmn 12y ago
I couldn't agree more. I can only imagine the disconnect the author of this must feel. Author, whomever, this is great work. I can see it being very useful for certain applications. Really nice, well-written and simple ruby gem too :)
- MatthewB 12y ago
  Thanks for the kind words:) Luckily, there weren't too many negative comments but I was happy to address their concerns. Can't make everyone happy (especially on the internet).
  - joshmn 12y ago
    To make this really interesting, have you thought about making plugins/addons for, say, SalesForce/WHMCS/ZenDesk? A plugin there could easily allow this thing to skyrocket.
larrys 12y ago
"Imagine how terrible it must feel to have your work responded to with such a harshly critical eye - what you're doing is making the opinions of HN more generally negative and more easily ignored, just as directors now ignore the overly critical tome of movie critics." What does "feeling" have to do with it? I can't agree with that. Criticism is valuable. You can't learn anything from a pat on the back as you can from criticism. That's not saying that some of the things aren't deserved. As an example I always get frustrated when the manager/owner of a restaurant walks around and says "is everything ok?" rather than "what can we do better or what wasn't perfect?" (in other words invite comments that may be negative). Enough with the attaboys. As far as HN what you typically can't learn from is downvotes without an explanation of why a downvote was received.

nemo44x 12y ago

I'm not sure that much thought has been put into this. Should probably work out the CEO/CTO titles first, figure out where to get funding for this clearly multi-billion dollar opportunity and begin to plan the exit immediately. "Lady luck please let the dice stay hot..."

dang 12y ago
This comment violates HN's rules about comments. Please read the guidelines and try harder to follow them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

curiously 12y ago

does twilio offer this sort of service? I have a toll free number and would like to offer text based replies.

vishaldpatel 12y ago
Not out of the box, no. Sonar makes use of Twilio in the back-end to provide all the front-end functionality that you see. As for porting your phone number over... a quick search found this: https://www.twilio.com/help/faq/phone-numbers/i-already-have-a-phone-number-i-love-can-i-port-it-to-twilio https://www.twilio.com/help/faq/phone-numbers/i-already-have... Feel free to send me an email: vishal@sendsonar.com.

curiously 12y ago

looks like they have real operators 24/7. how can you get those kind of operators, hopefully at low prices? odesk?

vishaldpatel 12y ago
A company that wants to operate 24/7 would need to hire for the night-shift. This would be based on demand, of course. Night-shift hours are probably lower since most customers go to sleep at night. I don't see why hiring evening and night staff would be that different apart from training. It's probably a bit more difficult to find people that want to work the night shift... some companies get around this by rotating staff between the day and night shifts regularly to give everyone a chance to lead a normal life.

benhov71 12y ago

It's not about technology but about service.