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Comment by MatthewB | Hacker News Reader

hey all - matt from Sonar here. happy to answer any questions. you can offer Magic-like service to your customers within minutes with Sonar.

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why would someone choose sonar over twilio?

great question. the main reason to use Sonar over twilio is that you'd have to essentially build our platform to be able to offer service like Magic. You need to be able to quickly send and receive text-messages through a web-UI (otherwise it becomes cumbersome to do it on a phone). we built that entire product already and it handle large volumes of messages from 10-digit numbers very well. with twilio, you just get the API.

also, we're built on (and love) twilio:)

So why not use, like, "web messages"? I heard about this thing called HTTP, seems pretty cool. Any opinions?

do you mean webchat? that's a good option as well but to build something as simple and awesome as Magic, text messaging is the way to go

yeah no, I mean like literally let the user insert a message through a form, like <input type="text">, that thing you know? And then you could, like, save that. Just save that data. And read it. And respond. Something like that. THEY ARE ON A BROWSER. Am I crazy here? Please, anyone? What year is this? Where am I?

You seem to be very confused (or trolling). This is about SMS, not an in-browser chats.

What do you mean they're on a browser? The purpose of Magic is to be able to hold the entire interaction with a text message. No browser involved.

Just so you (person who is new to HN) understands why your comment is downvoted here - HN is more of a community for providing constructive feedback. Read the other comments on this post to get practical examples.

If I posted something I had poured my heart and soul into for months/years and had to deal with sarcastic vitriol from someone who completely misses the point of what I'm trying to accomplish, I wouldn't feel comfortable posting my work here. I'm personally very grateful there is a community like HN where negativity and closed-mindedness is grayed out.

you probably ignore emails all day,

How often do you ignore text messages?

I heard about this thing called discussing your opinion directly instead of schoolyard passive aggression. It'd be awesome if we all did it. Thoughts?

I actually do like this concept. I've always found it cumbersome that online support is a live session where either one of you can get disconnected at any time, or that you might get occupied and can't finish the session there and then. Sonar easily solves that, while giving me the possibility to just pick up "messages" on my phone and ask them something out of the blue later on.

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