Mass text on the iPhone

October 24, 2009 8:44 PM

I often have to text a lot of people (as in, 50) simultaneously. The iPhone I'm going to get (don't even try to dissuade me ;-) will make this a very sad experience for me. What can I do?

As the president of my fraternity, I often need to send all of the brothers a text message. Right now I have the Motorola V3xx, which allows me to do message lists of 25 people, so it's just a 2-step process. With the iPhone, unless I figure out a better way, I'll have to individually select 10 guys at a time, then repeat that 4 more times. This is obviously not going to work.

My first thought was, to paraphrase, "There must be an app for that." Unfortunately, for some reason (presumably AT&T related), Apple will not allow apps to send text messages to more than 10 people at a time.

Options, as I see them:

1.) Mass text services.
I have only very little experience with such services. I'm using Joopz.com right now, but don't like the fact that messages are limited to 100 words, groups are limited to 10 people, and messages have to originate from the website (ie, not from my phone).

2.) Figure out SMS email addresses for everyone, use email.
I love this idea; I can just set up a listserv so that everyone in the organization can use it AND it's virtually cost-free. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find an up-to-date list of the templates for the major carriers.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks everyone!

posted by dondiego87 to technology (18 comments total)

I use this list to look up the SMS email addresses when I need to. I don't know how up to date it's kept, but it hasn't failed me so far. Is that what you're looking for?
posted by WowLookStars at 8:56 PM on October 24

Sounds like you want Twitter.
posted by jrockway at 9:08 PM on October 24 [2 favorites]

You can send an AIM message to +[phone number] and it will forward it as a text. I'm not sure if any of the iPhone AIM clients support bulk messaging, though.
posted by decagon at 9:11 PM on October 24

(Answering from my iPhone)

Twitter is what you want.
posted by LOLAttorney2009 at 9:21 PM on October 24

I'm not sure Twitter is the answer because the OP indicates having a problem with a 100-word limit on a service he already uses.
posted by dfriedman at 9:23 PM on October 24

dfriedman: "I'm not sure Twitter is the answer because the OP indicates having a problem with a 100-word limit on a service he already uses."

But 160 characters is a built-in SMS limit, so won't any mass text/ sms email address solution be limited?
posted by sharkfu at 9:27 PM on October 24

If the group rarely changes, you can just send one mass text on the iPhone and keep that conversation active. Each time you want to send another mass text, scroll down to that conversation and you can just type in the text.
posted by politikitty at 9:29 PM on October 24 [1 favorite]

I hate Twitter but this is basically what it's for.
posted by floam at 9:30 PM on October 24

Make a web page, and twitter out a link to it.
posted by aubilenon at 11:13 PM on October 24

I don't understand the 100 word issue. Texts are usually 160 characters. If you send a 100 word text, you are actually sending several and annoying the fraternity. Could you clarify what you mean and what you are sending?
posted by itsonreserve at 12:04 AM on October 25

Twitter limits you to 140 characters, rather then 160. But I don't think those 20 extra characters are really going to make that big of a difference. And of course you can send more then one message at a time. Or (as other people said) you can post something on a web page and tweet a link.

Plus, each user will be able to easily manage their subscriptions.
posted by delmoi at 1:29 AM on October 25

http://click.im might be what you are looking for.
posted by mulligan at 6:27 AM on October 25

But 160 characters is a built-in SMS limit...

I don't know the technology behind it, but I've sent long (and paragraphed) text messages back and forth via iPhone and the messages always come through whole. Now, maybe the iPhone is breaking them up and reassembling on the far side; but regardless of the mechanism, it works fine. The OP will be using an iPhone, so this shouldn't be an issue.

I'll have to individually select 10 guys at a time, then repeat that 4 more times.

But only once.

The iPhone stores text messages as threads. So you'll only have to go through the process of selecting 10 addresses once. If you message them on Monday, then you'll be able to click open that thread on Thursday and send another message to the same 10 guys. And now that iPhone has cut-&-paste, you won't have to retype your message 4 more times; you can just copy it into the next thread of 10 addresses. Et cetera.

That's not an ideal solution, obviously. But it's one.
posted by cribcage at 7:49 AM on October 25

You probably want a relay service like Group2call or 3jam. (I haven't tried either one.)
posted by Nameless at 8:45 AM on October 25

Now, maybe the iPhone is breaking them up and reassembling on the far side; but regardless of the mechanism, it works fine. The OP will be using an iPhone, so this shouldn't be an issue.

It is, in fact, breaking them down and reassembling them.

The problem is that the standard for how to do this is...uhh..non-standard. The result is that people with phones from different manufacturers stand a decent chance of receiving garbled crap.

I regularly receive these messages out of order on my Blackberry, when they're sent by certain people. Other people, they comes through fine. When I send the message, sometimes it works for people, sometimes they receive block 3, then block 1, then block 2 comes in ten minutes later.

Multi-part SMS is totally busted for any sort of serious use.
posted by Netzapper at 12:23 PM on October 25

This would actually be a great use of Twitter. Though, it would mean all your buddies would have to sign up for Twitter.
posted by chunking express at 8:11 AM on October 26

You could try Swaggle.mobi
posted by studentbaker at 8:47 AM on October 26

I don't have an iPhone, and I'm not on AT&T. When I get an SMS from an iPhone user who can't get to the point in 160 characters the message comes through in multiple SMSs, and usually, the last part of the message arrives first, followed by the first half that is needed to make any sense of what they blabbered about.

Twitter is what you want for this.
posted by jrishel at 11:51 AM on October 26