

Twilio Announces MMS Support - sunsu
http://www.twilio.com/mms

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josh2600
Where's Rob Spectre at when you need him!!

So many questions.

1) Does Twilio own an MMSC? How did access happen? This is no easy feat.

2) How does signaling work? MMS is an incredibly rich format and can do a ton
of stuff SMS can't.

3) I'd love to hear the backstory on how this went down. I imagine this is
multiple years of work coming together.

Yeah, I'm a telecom nerd and I know how politically difficult this is to
achieve. Incredibly impressed if this is real MMS. That's one of the carrier
grails, so getting that exposed is awesome.

Would love to hear more if possible!!

~~~
RobSpectre
Hanging out on the floor at Twiliocon, Josh - you should come!

Great questions - as you can imagine there's not a whole lot I can share about
the relationships with our carrier partners. Working with them was essential
to bringing this product to market, and we sincerely appreciate all the hours
they put with us on getting Picture Messaging out the door.

A few details to the questions I can share:

1) The signaling, the SMIL generation and whole lot of other headaches from
the MM* protocols are completely behind the API. We tried to keep this new
feature as close to the SMS API you already know and love as possible - for
inbound there are just four new params (NumMedia, MediaUrln, MediaContentType
and the new unique identifier MessageSid) and for outbound just one new param
MediaUrl.

You send / receive your photos - we make it work for whomever is sending or
receiving. If you're at Twiliocon this week, two of our messaging leads Thomas
Wilsher and Kelvin Law are dropping a _killer_ talk on some of the technical
details around this abstraction. It's probably my favorite of our talks at
Twiliocon right now.

2) This was the combined effort of a whole lot of talent inside and outside
Twilio for a very long time. Very proud of what they've been able to
accomplish working together and so stoked to see first hand how excited
developers are to use it.

3) This is real MMS sending and receiving pictures. We rolled out Picture
Messaging first as we wanted to get it in developers hands as quickly as
possible.

Got to head back out and join the Doers at the Design Concourse in San
Francisco - Twiliocon only comes once a year, so I don't want to miss more
time with all the hackers that came out to hang.

Always great to hear from you Josh. You should swing by if you're in town.

~~~
josh2600
I wanted to go so bad!!! We're over at TC3 today, but I think Shells from our
sales team is out there. If you can, you should corner her! She's awesome.

Congratulations on this feature. You and I both know how ridiculously hard
this is and I commend you for going after this.

One quick question: is mms a short code only thing or is it available on long-
codes as well? Some of the language in your marketing materials left me
unclear.

Thanks, and again, Shoutout to you, Jeff and all the other amazing folks at
Twilio. MMS access in telecom is my definition of "killing it".

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evilduck
Being subscribed to cat facts is about to get 100x more awesome.

~~~
RobSpectre
Oh biscuits.

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sologoub
Congrats! Like @josh2600 said, no small accomplishment!

Any plans for US phone number (as opposed to just shortcode) support for
sending/receiving MMS?

~~~
RobSpectre
We are working very hard to bring this service to US phone numbers - we want
it as badly as you.

For now, we have it on US short codes and Canadian phone numbers.

~~~
RobSpectre
btw - Thanks! We worked really hard on it.

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webology
I was really excited until I realized (like others here) that MMS only works
with _US short codes_ and Canadian phone numbers.

If anyone needs this functionality today then mogreet has an api but it works
over a shared shortcode so you have to send a keyword with it.

I am really looking forward to the day that Twilio or someone else supports
MMS without the need of a short code.

~~~
tzz
After so many years, Google Voice still doesn't support MMS. I am afraid
Twilio will have the same issue dealing with the carrier partner in the US. I
hope they support it soon but I am afraid it will be long.

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justincormack
MMS died years ago. Terrible technically and never actually worked the four
times in someone tried to send one.

~~~
natrius
As a Google Voice user who gets to experience life without MMS support, I can
tell you that MMS is very alive. I've missed several social engagements that
people coordinated via group texts, and a couple of _sensitive images_ that
had to be resent over email after the sender was perplexed by my silence...

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reustle
I have my primary number through google voice and I just get a sms saying "MMS
Received" and then I get an email with a picture attachment. Not sure about
group texts though.

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ybot
This has only ever been true for MMS received from Sprint users. Google Voice
& Sprint's current FAQ indicates that MMS no longer works, even on Sprint [1].

[1]
[https://support.google.com/voice/answer/1205636?hl=en](https://support.google.com/voice/answer/1205636?hl=en)

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wiradikusuma
Honest question, why you need MMS since everyone can just send multimedia via
email/FB/Whatsapp/hundreds social messaging app? My experience with MMS has
not be pleasant: slow, limited (low quality), unreliable (sometimes does not
arrive or corrupted) and expensive (compared to "free" in email etc).

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earlz
ugh. Only on shortcodes for US.. That means extremely expensive to try out
:(.. A short code is $3,000 every 3 months

~~~
RobSpectre
We wanted very badly to get this to you as well - it'll be released as soon as
we can.

~~~
sv123
Are we talking < 6 months or > 6 months?

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JSadowski
Sadly, it doesn't look like they support group messaging. That would be a
killer feature.

~~~
RobSpectre
Thanks for that feedback - we wanted to get Picture Messaging out of the door
as soon as we had it before attacking the wealth of other features MMS has to
offer.

Really hope you enjoy it and check in often as we support more stuff.

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madsushi
Canadians and US Short Code owners get all of the cool toys (for now, at
least). I have been waiting for Twilio MMS for at least a year, but it looks
like I have to wait a bit longer (or get into the beta).

~~~
RobSpectre
I definitely hear you. We want it as badly as you do - can't wait to get them
in your hands.

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parfe
Does this mean group messaging is available? I've missed out on a few events
due to not receiving a group text to my google voice number.

Is there a service that can replace google voice?

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THE_PUN_STOPS
I can relate, not being able to receive group texts is now my #1 issue with
GVoice, since they've fixed most of the bugginess in the Android client.

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erikig
This is great, I believe the only other feature I've been praying for is
Premium SMS/MMS.

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404error
Did anyone find the pricing for MMS on their site?

~~~
mfenniak
Reliable Pricing: Send pictures for 2¢/message and receive pictures for just
1¢/message.

Storage: Store 5GB of pictures you send and receive for free, then just 20¢
per additional GB.

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toomuchtodo
20 cents a GB? ick.

~~~
mfenniak
That is a pretty steep rate, but I figure you'd treat their storage like an
"INBOX" and grab images through the API and put it into your own persistent
storage. So, the 5GB free component should probably cover a good number of
use-cases.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I guess. Still feels like you're getting gouged when you know they're getting
discounted S3 storage rates based on their utilization.

~~~
RobSpectre
Fully heard and appreciated. Obviously, the storage of this media does have
real cost, but feedback on the pricepoint is helpful.

Thank you.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Thanks Rob. I understand you have costs, but with both compute and storage
prices plummeting, it stands out when you have an outlier like that.

