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Comment by josephschmoe | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why anyone would use this. I've never been anything but angry when I received a text message from a business. I've never met anyone who likes receiving text messages from businesses.

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You can have any preferences you care to, but it's valuable to assimilate the fact that many people don't share them.

There are many use cases for B2C text messages where the customers will be ecstatic to get the message. An example near and dear to my heart: many people appreciate automated appointment reminders. e.g. "Reminder: Fido's appt with Vet Bob is at 3 PM Tuesday. Text back 1 to confirm or 5 to cancel."

One of my most common customer support inquiries is "Bob Smith came in for his appointment today and said he didn't get a reminder for his appointment like usual. He was upset. What gives?"

Texts from companies can be great when they're informational, e.g. parcel tracking, appointment reminders ('the engineer will arrive in the next 30 minutes') and so on. But these are all better IMO when they are accompanied by an actual real phone number that you can contact in case of a query. So in my eyes, short codes are worse.

Absolutely, an unsolicited SMS would drive anyone mad, but they're also incredibly low-friction and useful for appointment reminders.

Case in point, Ramit Sethi regularly holds one-off sales webinars and ends all (?) of the RSVP ("give me your name and email") funnels with an optional, "Would you like to receive an SMS reminder before the webinar begins?"

There's enough of a B2C trust relationship that I don't mind giving up my phone # for a one-time reminder to join the webinars when they begin. It's way simpler than putting a low-priority event like that on my calendar and probably quite effective at converting more people to join the webcast.

Compare that to some O'reilly webcasts that advertise via an initial email, have you RSVP by filling out a 7 or 8 field survey, and then still forget to send an email reminder that the webcast is starting. I'm mentally exhausted and I also miss the event.

I hear you. We all hate SPAM!

In the US, short-codes are helpful for B2C SMS communication. US has many regulations on using a regular phone number for sending SMS via Applications and APIs.

For starters, a shortcode allows you to send 40 sms/second which is not allowed using a regular phone number.

We have tried to document some of the differences and cases when a shortcode is helpful: http://plivo.com/faq/shortcode/what-is-the-difference-betwee...

You haven't answered the question. Why is someone going to be happier to receive SMS from a short number than from a long one?

You didn't ask that question, nor did anyone claim that as near as I can see: only that there are clearly usages for sending text messages to users, and that short codes are better in at least some way (such as indicated here: sending large quantities is more easily possible).

That said: I'll bite (in case anyone else reads your message and gets confused); as a user who deals with a bunch of services that send text messages (Bank of America, Equifax, AAA, Google, AT&T, UCSB, Pingdom...) I consider the ones where I get some random long number infuriating if the number isn't at least constant for me (as I can't add it to my address book), unprofessional (it would be as if someone hosted Apple's website on their Geocities account), and even "risky" (as the numbers are usually different for different carriers, and as mentioned even tend to randomly cycle, there's no reasonable way for me to know that it isn't someone playing a prank on me when I get the message; yes: SMS is somewhat spoofable, but replying to a short code, in my understanding, is not subject to those problems).

Hipchat is a notable service that seems to pick random phone numbers to send SMS notifications. It can get really confusing when they split notifications over multiple messages, and the carrier drops or delays the first message or two that tell you it's from Hipchat — subsequent messages do not indicate who it is from.

I think it depends a lot on solicitation. If the message is not providing value to the recipient then it's obviously intrusive. This is a much more powerful effect than normal since texting is so intimate. That said, it's quite likely that in circumstances where the sender represents someone with the interests of the recipient in mind then it can be reassuring. Consider, for instance, reminders about an appointment with your dentist. Totally automated system, needs a shortcode at scale, but very trustworthy.

How about these use-cases:

* Reminder to take your medication

* Alerts for urgent municipal job opportunities

* How far away is my nearest bus?

* Reminders to take your new baby to get vaccinations

* Motivation to quit smoking

* Interactive customer service / hotlines / health lines

We send text messages to millions of people who certainly appreciate (date I say, love) getting them.

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