Real-Life Social Networking Tools

November 2, 2008 8:11 AM

What online or iPhone-based tool can I use to send text messages to a bunch of people at once? A related but larger question: what online social networking tools can I use to help connect a community of not-very-geeky people who know each other in real life?

I'm a community organizer who needs to stay in touch with a large and frequently changing group of people who live in my town. We have an e-mail list, but people don't seem to read/respond to it very much.

I want to be able to easily manage a list of around 100 phone numbers (starting from the Contacts in my iPhone) and easily send text messages to the whole list or any sublist.

Folks in my community range in age from 20 to 79 and are typically not very geeky. I think email isn't working partly because folks don't read their email very often, and partly because they get a lot of it and are overwhelmed by it.

One barrier to entry seems to be having to set up an account/profile, either due to usability issues or privacy concerns. We've been using Google technology to manage the email list and share documents, and a lot of people seem to get stuck at setting up a Google account.

posted by ottereroticist to computers & internet (16 comments total)

Text message notification will piss off all of the community members that don't have unlimited text messaging plans.

ATT, for example, charges you extra for text messaging even after you've bought a blackberry or iPhone data plan.
posted by b1tr0t at 9:05 AM on November 2, 2008

Online social networking was created solely for geeky people, so this will be a tough question.
posted by Zambrano at 9:05 AM on November 2, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

You know the expression to a hammer everything looks like a nail? I think you have this problem.

It sounds like you are expecting the members of the group to change their life patterns (checking email daily/using SMS/comfort level with computers) in order to minimize your own work. SMS/TXT is something heavily used by a younger generation, most non-geeky people I know in their 20s to 70s don't use it, if they even have a cellphone at all. Do they even have txt enabled cell phones/ daily computer access? Find out what method of communication the RECIPIENTS prefer and tailor messages to it. Create an old-fashioned phone tree if necessary. Maybe they would prefer real-life face time (shockingly, some people do!)

If you are going to insist on email then see if you can partner with the local library in setting up a class in creating gmail accounts (this of course depends on if the library has time/space available for a large group - most don't).

If you create barriers to access and make the group a lot of work you risk turning people off the project entirely.
posted by saucysault at 9:12 AM on November 2, 2008

The whole point of my question is to make things as easy as possible for members of the group, of which I am one. I KNOW that email doesn't work for everyone. I KNOW that SMS doesn't work for everyone. I am trying to find options that work for more people than the one we're using now, which is an email list.
posted by ottereroticist at 9:25 AM on November 2, 2008

Zambrano makes a good point. If these people don't even check their email regularly, and get stuck setting up a Google account, then any techie solution to your problem will be an exercise in frustration.

Several times over the years, I tried to set up family blogs or other ways for the family to stay in touch. I made these as simple as possible, with step-by-step illustrated instructions, plus phone calls to encourage participation, or even reading of the messages that I posted, to no avail. Yet, these same people continued to forward every OMGLOOKATTHIS! email they ever got.

Text messaging is even more geeky than email. In addition to the very real possibility of incurring text charges (and wrath), many people may not even be aware of how to read a text message. ("I was wondering what that beeping was!") Personally, I would absolutely hate getting a text message from a community group. I see text messages as very personal, and reserved for friends or business associates. This kind of thing would feel like spam.

I think your best bet is to pursue the social network website idea. Facebook might work, but if they can't handle setting up a Google account, you are probably banging your head against the wall. You may have to resort to phone calls or flyers in the mail. Good luck!
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 9:26 AM on November 2, 2008

At the risk of over-moderating, please don't get hung up on the "not very geeky" part. Some members do use SMS, and my primary question is in search of a solution for sending group SMS messages that is somewhat less painful than my iPhone's native capability.
posted by ottereroticist at 9:32 AM on November 2, 2008

Any phone I've ever seen lets you select a list of recipients. Any smart phone should have contact groups which you can then edit before sending, seems rather stupid if the iPhone doesn't import the groups from AddressBook. If your the iPhone lacks these basic features, then you can always use a Nokia while organizing people, you might need MMSs anyway.

I'd say your best option is the various online services. I suppose you have unlimited texts on your mobile, but we're not talking lots of money if you avoid Skype's expensive SMSs. I mean, iPhones kinda suck for crafting important messages because they lack cut & paste.

You might consider letting your organizational contacts sign up for various contact methods : sms, email, facebook, and personal phone call (older people only). You can write a perl scripts that send sms, email, or facebook, while deciding yourself if you want to call those requiring calls. Btw, you won't get bounce messages when sms are sent to bad numbers.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:33 AM on November 2, 2008

Twitter? They don't have to create an account, but they would have to at least check the page. If they did create an account, they could choose to receive txt messages or not. Either these people are interested in what you have to say or not; you can't force your message upon them. If they want to know what you have to say, they should be at least proactive enough to visit your twitter page (or a blog).
posted by desjardins at 9:36 AM on November 2, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

most carriers provide an e-mail address that will route your message to the phone via SMS. for example, to send an e-mail via SMS to an AT&T subscriber, the address is "[e-mail]". here's a list of them.

the obvious drawback here is that you'll have to find out what carrier the person's using. however, since you're talking to them anyway, that may not be that big of a hurdle, and it'd weed out the people who don't want text messages. and, depending on how big these emails are, you can still keep the email list thing. (SMS has a 140 character limit.) there are also sites that can do similar that don't require knowledge of the carrier; google "sms gateway". Red Oxygen has outlook plugins and stuff like that, but they're not free. personally, i'd recommend asking over an automated service - i'd be the person who wouldn't want a text message - but options are out there.

as far as social interaction goes, Google is probably your best bet, though good documentation and some hand holding can probably make the transition a bit easier (it's amazing how much having a helpdesk can help). maybe use Google Apps for Domains rather than the normal, consumer-oriented one - it'd be more of a walled experience and would tie into a domain if you have one. if Twitter meets your needs, you can also use Laconica to set up a similar service (you'll need a server).
posted by mrg at 10:12 AM on November 2, 2008

Twitter. There are a couple of ways to set up a group tweet system: grouptweet or manually. Twitter can send SMS.
posted by adamrice at 10:35 AM on November 2, 2008

I asked a similar question recently and landed on Phonevite, which works best (as in, free) for fewer than 25 people. It's a voice message, not SMS, but that might work well with your crowd. Alternately, I just ran across a mention of this service, Notifu, about which I know almost nothing, but it sounds like it might meet your needs--SMS, email, phone, IM, etc. I can't tell from the site if it has a maximum number of recipients, but it does allow you to create distribution lists.
posted by cocoagirl at 10:39 AM on November 2, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I haven't used this service, but some googling revealed Tatango.
posted by reishus at 10:40 AM on November 2, 2008

Just saw this on Lifehacker. It may fill your needs, I really didn't look too closely. Notifu.
posted by pearlybob at 10:55 AM on November 2, 2008

Sorry cocoagirl, I didn't preview.
posted by pearlybob at 11:01 AM on November 2, 2008

Could a blog work better for your purposes? Your community's members would need to be motivated to keep checking back for the idea to be successful - whether they are or not is something you'll have to ascertain - but something like Wordpress could do the trick in allowing you to easily update a blog, which readers could then respond to by commenting? I think the way Wordpress handles reader "accounts" is that, when a reader first adds a comment, the email address they use is run by the blog-keeper for approval, and after that, they can comment away with no problems. No accounts need to be registered, but their name will show up with the comments, which could assist with enabling a community feeling: Jane could see what Joe wrote before her, and add her thoughts in a conversational manner. New people arriving could see the most recent entries first but also access old ones, and by seeing others' comments could get a feel for doing so themselves.

Email lists, if quiet, can fail to give the same feeling of responsiveness that commenting on blogs can do, where even if your comment doesn't elicit a response you can see what you've posted appearing in a concrete sort of manner on a virtual "bulletin board". Could be more satisfying for your community? You could register a memorable .com domain for it to make it easy for people to get to it when they think about it, and could still notify people by email when new blog entries were published, providing a link to view and/or comment on the new entry.

Whatever you do, if there's room for confusion it could be worthwhile putting together on a single sheet of paper some good clear instructions on how to sign up to and use whatever tool you go with, and giving this/making it available to new interested parties. Write them in a way that's specific to your community and put your logo on it - don't just provide general instructions downloaded off the net: it can make people feel like someone's around who cares and is willing to give them a hand if they need it. Even if you don't suggest explicitly that they can contact you for help, just feeling that it's not impossible to get it might keep them from getting frustrated and walking away.
posted by springbound at 4:20 PM on November 2, 2008

The difficulty in sending multi-recipient texts is solely an iphone problem. Any other phone will allow you to send multi-recipient text messages via your contacts. Your wireless carrier probably has a web-based text message interface, so it's worth checking to see if that will allow you to set a distribution list or just paste in a whole bunch of numbers.

This all goes without saying that if your group is getting hung up creating a Google Account, you might as well give up on anything online.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 6:06 PM on November 2, 2008