This isn't related to the MMS announcement, but I'd like to give Twilio big, big props for being one of the most developer and technology-friendly companies out there.
Not only is their API easy to use, constantly improved, and impeccably supported, but over the course of the last year, they've donated thousands of dollars worth of free credit to technology activists including the EFF, Taskforce.is, and Fight for the Future. They've even modified their privacy policy to make it possible for my team at EFF to use Twilio on campaigns we run.
Rob Spectre, who's replying to comments in this thread, has been amazing too - offering hands-on support when we run big campaigns like The Day We Fight Back and last week's Battle for the Net.
This is an amazing biz dev achievement. Twilio seems to be getting closer to aggregating all of the hard stuff in telco land every day.
It's hard to overstate just how hard this is to do. This isn't as simple as going to an aggregator and getting SMS done, MMS has been one of the last bastions of exerted carrier influence and it's slowly being democratized. This is the first time I can recall someone getting this level of access to MMS services within operators (please correct me if I'm wrong).
It seems like it would be the first time someone has done it properly. What is so beautiful about Twilio is their attention to detail for developers - amazing documentation, samples, etc so I am assuming their MMS implementation will be as clean. Here's hoping.
mBlox, OpenMarket, Mobile365 all tried to implement the half assed MMS implementation forced on them by the carrier market and it was an absolutely nightmare. I'm surprised noone in the tech press ever did a deep dive expose on just how archaic the whole certification process was, and the user experience was terrible.
Summary: this is not the first time the carriers have opened up MMS. Hopefully it will be the first time developers can leverage MMS the way it was intended.
Looking on the site, I see SMS/MMS support on all LOCAL US/Canadian numbers, but TFNs remain SMS-only. Just curious, any plans to add MMS to toll free numbers?
PS: still amazed that you got SMS working on TFNs, though I guess that's more of the SMS/800 (the organization charged with managing TFNs in North America, not to be confused with SMS messaging...)
Awesome - stoked to hear SMS on toll-free numbers is working out for you. We're keen to extend MMS to them as well - don't have a timetable to share on that score.
Can you elaborate on the relationship between Twilio and Bandwidth.com? I actually have very little understanding of what happens once Twilio receives an API request.
Google Voice numbers are powered by Bandwidth.com. Bandwidth announced that they were working on support a couple of months ago. So, at least its in the pipeline.
I've played wit Twilio and have used it to extend some of the hooks I previously had in IFTTT. Additionally I've been toying with porting my number out of Google Voice for compatibility (ie. no MMS) and privacy reasons. My question is, how hard would it be to build your own personal Google Voice like service around the twilio API, or has anyone done this?
I set up a quick and dirty version of GV with one of their provided Twimlets[1]. All it does is record a message, transcribe it, then send the results to my email address. My wife and I used this, for example, when looking for a mortgage loan (they never. stop. calling.)
I've thought long and hard about building something more complicated but I was always sort of stopped by the lack of MMS and my (apparently faulty) understanding of how their Caller ID works[2]. Not anymore!
[2]: Previously I had thought you could only set registered numbers as caller ID, but turns out if you dial out while processing an incoming call you can set the caller ID as the incoming number. See here: https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/twiml/dial#attributes-caller...
OpenVBX (http://www.openvbx.org/) does exactly this and runs on twilio however it's a bit of a chore to setup on EC2 and unfortunately development isn't that active so I wouldn't expect to see MMS anytime soon. A real shame.
I used it to setup a menu with recordings and things like'press 1 for support' to route calls for our sales and support teams.
I did this and released it as an iOS app (http://www.lineup-app.com). It's not free, but it is built entirely on Twilio's APIs and has most of GV's functionality. I currently live in Berlin and use it all the time with my "old" US number (after porting it to Twilio).
Twilio's test MMS (or any Twilio SMS) messages have never worked for me on the AT&T and Tmobile MVNO Straight Talk which uses Tracfone's MMS servers. I'd be curious what other MVNOs lurking about in the US are not handled by this. Does Cricket work?
Would love to learn more about why these messages are failing for you. Reckon you could shoot us some of the failed SmsSids to [email protected]? I'd be much obliged.
Lots actually. MMS is hard - multiple devices with no consistency, different interconnect gateways that can mangle messages along the way. An easy to use, reliable and pervasive MMS gateway isn't as easy to implement as some might think and the carriers haven't made it a priority. In fact the US carriers completely messed up their early MMS implementations with Washington-style regulation that made the user experience beyond horrible. Here's hoping Twilio makes some progress with this and I wish them much success.
EDIT: I realized that I didn't actually answer your question. MMS can be supported by carriers in different ways but the most typical interface is MM7 which is SOAP over HTTP. There are many MM7 gateway vendors and they all handle MIME boundaries, payloads, transcoding, etc different - subtle differences, but enough to make testing against a large matrix of devices very, very hard.
[+] [-] sinak|11 years ago|reply
Not only is their API easy to use, constantly improved, and impeccably supported, but over the course of the last year, they've donated thousands of dollars worth of free credit to technology activists including the EFF, Taskforce.is, and Fight for the Future. They've even modified their privacy policy to make it possible for my team at EFF to use Twilio on campaigns we run.
Rob Spectre, who's replying to comments in this thread, has been amazing too - offering hands-on support when we run big campaigns like The Day We Fight Back and last week's Battle for the Net.
Thanks to all the Twilio team. You rock.
[+] [-] josh2600|11 years ago|reply
It's hard to overstate just how hard this is to do. This isn't as simple as going to an aggregator and getting SMS done, MMS has been one of the last bastions of exerted carrier influence and it's slowly being democratized. This is the first time I can recall someone getting this level of access to MMS services within operators (please correct me if I'm wrong).
[+] [-] RobSpectre|11 years ago|reply
Text a pic of yourself to (646) 846-8238 - you should get a sweet mustache back.
[+] [-] iconicaapl|11 years ago|reply
mBlox, OpenMarket, Mobile365 all tried to implement the half assed MMS implementation forced on them by the carrier market and it was an absolutely nightmare. I'm surprised noone in the tech press ever did a deep dive expose on just how archaic the whole certification process was, and the user experience was terrible.
Summary: this is not the first time the carriers have opened up MMS. Hopefully it will be the first time developers can leverage MMS the way it was intended.
[+] [-] yid|11 years ago|reply
Would Mogreet qualify? I've used their MMS support for a side project more than a year ago, and found that it works well across carriers in the US.
https://developer.mogreet.com/
[+] [-] sologoub|11 years ago|reply
PS: still amazed that you got SMS working on TFNs, though I guess that's more of the SMS/800 (the organization charged with managing TFNs in North America, not to be confused with SMS messaging...)
[+] [-] patio11|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RobSpectre|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baghali|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinburke|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshpadnick|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmoullet|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Vivtek|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zrail|11 years ago|reply
[1]: https://www.phaxio.com
[2]: https://www.petekeen.net/command-line-faxing
[+] [-] nathancahill|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jewel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sunsu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aroch|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zrail|11 years ago|reply
I've thought long and hard about building something more complicated but I was always sort of stopped by the lack of MMS and my (apparently faulty) understanding of how their Caller ID works[2]. Not anymore!
[1]: https://www.twilio.com/labs/twimlets/voicemail
[2]: Previously I had thought you could only set registered numbers as caller ID, but turns out if you dial out while processing an incoming call you can set the caller ID as the incoming number. See here: https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/twiml/dial#attributes-caller...
[+] [-] driverdan|11 years ago|reply
1: https://www.bettervoice.com/
[+] [-] hiharryhere|11 years ago|reply
I used it to setup a menu with recordings and things like'press 1 for support' to route calls for our sales and support teams.
[+] [-] estromlund|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] holic|11 years ago|reply
https://callmemaybe.meteor.com/
Unfortunately, the Connect API was a bit confusing to implement, so you actually have to paste in your API key.
My goal is to rewrite it soon with basic features like call forwarding, blocking, etc.
[+] [-] adamonduty|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blocke|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RobSpectre|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teyc|11 years ago|reply
Don't telcos provide MMS gateway like how they provide SMS gateways? What is actually happening under the hood here?
[+] [-] iconicaapl|11 years ago|reply
EDIT: I realized that I didn't actually answer your question. MMS can be supported by carriers in different ways but the most typical interface is MM7 which is SOAP over HTTP. There are many MM7 gateway vendors and they all handle MIME boundaries, payloads, transcoding, etc different - subtle differences, but enough to make testing against a large matrix of devices very, very hard.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] RobSpectre|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmalpeli|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hox|11 years ago|reply