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At Sonar (sendsonar.com), we're seeing SMS take e-mail's place for conversations. Of course, e-mail is great for longer-form information sharing. But for conver

At Sonar (sendsonar.com), we're seeing SMS take e-mail's place for conversations. Of course, e-mail is great for longer-form information sharing. But for conversations, SMS is often the right channel.

ekianjo 11y ago
> we're seeing SMS take e-mail's place for conversations. Even with the 140 characters limits?
- vishaldpatel 11y ago
  Even with the limits. The back-and-forth is fairly quick, and longer messages are just broken up into multiple messages. Like regular conversations though, people tend to keep it short and sweet.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    But SMS is not free, right ? How do you deal with the ongoing operator costs?
    - vishaldpatel 11y ago
      Not free, but fairly inexpensive. Most US mobile plans provide unlimited SMS messaging to their customers, and many foreign ones provide free incoming messages. For business, the value of reliable delivery, timely and increased customer engagement tends to far outweigh the costs.
      - ekianjo 11y ago
        > For business, the value of reliable delivery, timely and increased customer engagement tends to far outweigh the costs. Aren't there cases when phone networks get massively congested and SMS are not delivered until hours later? Such as New Year, Natural Catastrophes, etc... in that sense Email delivery is superior because it's fully decentralized.
        vishaldpatel 11y ago
        We did receive inquiries from companies about being able to deliver SMS messages during recent natural disasters. Turns out that people need to communicate during calamities and often prefer text and so do services that are delivering services to these people.
      - zhte415 11y ago
        That's interesting. I was going to ask a counter-point, such as WeChat or WhatsApp being more popular. Which I guess is the case in personal connections, but as SMS is, like email, federated, it makes sense for companies knowing messages get delivered (and is probably a lot more reliable than email in deliverability status reports), and there is a huge demand for that, not least regulatory and compliance (and regular customer service).
- martin_ 11y ago
  At least in the US, SMS can be up to 1600 characters on most carriers/handsets now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concatenated_SMS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concatenated_SMS
detaro 11y ago
From your homepage I guess I should read "conversations" as "advertising" (and related activities)?
- vishaldpatel 11y ago
  Conversations as in 2-way messaging (customer service, sales, status updates etc..), rather than one-way advertising.

ekianjo 11y ago

> we're seeing SMS take e-mail's place for conversations. Even with the 140 characters limits?

vishaldpatel 11y ago
Even with the limits. The back-and-forth is fairly quick, and longer messages are just broken up into multiple messages. Like regular conversations though, people tend to keep it short and sweet.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  But SMS is not free, right ? How do you deal with the ongoing operator costs?
  - vishaldpatel 11y ago
    Not free, but fairly inexpensive. Most US mobile plans provide unlimited SMS messaging to their customers, and many foreign ones provide free incoming messages. For business, the value of reliable delivery, timely and increased customer engagement tends to far outweigh the costs.
    - ekianjo 11y ago
      > For business, the value of reliable delivery, timely and increased customer engagement tends to far outweigh the costs. Aren't there cases when phone networks get massively congested and SMS are not delivered until hours later? Such as New Year, Natural Catastrophes, etc... in that sense Email delivery is superior because it's fully decentralized.
      - vishaldpatel 11y ago
        We did receive inquiries from companies about being able to deliver SMS messages during recent natural disasters. Turns out that people need to communicate during calamities and often prefer text and so do services that are delivering services to these people.
    - zhte415 11y ago
      That's interesting. I was going to ask a counter-point, such as WeChat or WhatsApp being more popular. Which I guess is the case in personal connections, but as SMS is, like email, federated, it makes sense for companies knowing messages get delivered (and is probably a lot more reliable than email in deliverability status reports), and there is a huge demand for that, not least regulatory and compliance (and regular customer service).
martin_ 11y ago
At least in the US, SMS can be up to 1600 characters on most carriers/handsets now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concatenated_SMS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concatenated_SMS

detaro 11y ago

From your homepage I guess I should read "conversations" as "advertising" (and related activities)?

vishaldpatel 11y ago
Conversations as in 2-way messaging (customer service, sales, status updates etc..), rather than one-way advertising.