Tech Geek

The posts that are the most work, but also the most fun, are the ones that I write in response to questions posed by you! This week I received a question from a friend who wondered if it were possible to send text messages to a group of people easily. Of course, one shudders to think of thumb-typing the same message out dozens of time, so I went looking for another way! I thought this should be possible, but didn't know if it would be easy or not. Some phones support sending text messages to groups, but depending on your plan, you may be dinged a dime or so for each one you send. Thankfully, I have this tool called the 'internet' which I can use to do research! :)

It seemed to me that this is technically a fairly easy thing to do and there should be tools to help do it. One option that came to mind was sending e-mails to the SMS gateways that most cellular carriers have. For example, you can send a message to a Verizon user by addressing it to {phone-number}@vtext.com. Wikipedia has a list of many of the e-mail and web gateways here. The challenge to this method is that you need to know which carrier each of your youth is using. I suppose you could ask each of them, but that seems like a pain. There are some online tools that might help, but because of number portability, they are not always accurate. (If I sign up with one carrier originally, then port my number to another carrier, most of these tools still list the first carrier.) One blog I stumbled upon suggested that you e-mail to all the carriers in your area and then see which messages do and do not bounce.

There are also websites and services that allow you to send messages to groups of people at a per-message cost of a dime or more. This could quickly get expensive, although I suppose it is quite a bit cheaper than the postcards I'm using now! For example, Skype (a great tool for on-line calls) will let you send text messages for about 11.2 cents per message. You can send text messages to phones from Yahoo Messenger for free, but I'm not sure it supports sending to a group of people all at the same time.

So I kept researching and looking for a better way. I found a blog called Life in Student Ministry: Conversations among those passionate for teenagers. On this blog was a post that seemed to fit what I was looking for. It was titled, Sending youth group announcements as mass text messages. I read through both the article and the comments that followed and then went to the sites that were linked too. Most of the conversation made a lot of sense to me as it raised the pros and cons of the ideas I had had. Here's what I found out, sort of ordered in what I found least interesting to what I found most interesting.

• TXT Signal is a service that people on the blog post seemed to be quite fond off. It allows you to send messages to a group of people after they enter their numbers on line. You need to send a sign-up e-mail or post a link on your website that your youth need to respond to to opt-in to the text messages. A basic 100 person plan with 60 messages per month is $14. This service does not allow people to reply to you.
• Jabber*Text charges 3 cents per message and allows you to manage your contact list online. They say on their website that they "started this service with church youth groups in mind -- giving youth workers the power to communicate to their students easily and affordably."
• Club-Texting has a page devoted to how their services can be used by religious group. I couldn't find pricing information on their site.
• Broadtexter mobile clubs were originally designed for musicians, but they have opened membership to others as well. For groups, Broadtexter is free with occasional advertising included in messages. They also have a premium, ad-free product.
• Zemble is a free service that does exactly what we're looking for. It lets you create groups and send text messages to them. You can send messages to people who have not signed-up for the service. From the poking around I've done today, this looks like the best and least expensive (free) service to send text messages. However, they don't seem to offer an easy way to import contacts, so you'll have to enter them one by one. The focus of Zemble seems to be on social networking (like Facebook or MySpace) using text messages. It could work for you if you can survive the setup process!
• Jott, a service I use and talk about often, will also allow you to send to groups. They use both e-mail and text message delivery. You could set up a group of contacts in Jott and send messages that way. Then you call and dictate your message to Jott and have it sent to the group. Some folks will get them as text and others as e-mail. Jott allows you to use CSV files to import your contacts.
• Pinger is probably the most interesting of the services that I have looked at today. It's similar to Jott in some ways, but it also gives you some other options. Instead of just sending a text message, it sends a text message that invites the recipient to call back and hear a voice message. It provides numerous ways to get your contacts into their system, including directly from Outlook or Palm Desktop. The website describes the service as one which lets you "send voice messages to each other's mobile phones without interrupting.  It's fast and efficient like email, portable like text messaging, and powered with your voice." Pinger also allows you to stop using your cellular carrier's voicemail service and switch to an online service (saving those minutes) instead. I haven't tried it since I just discovered the service today, but I am intrigued!

What has your experience been with getting the word out to the youth of your church? What tools have you used and how effective have they been?