

Ask HN: Review my Twilio SMS app, friendpods - GraffitiTim
http://friendpods.com

======
GraffitiTim
This app is only a few days into development, but I wanted to get some
feedback as early as possible. There are some important features that are
obviously missing, like the ability to edit or leave friendpods. If you need
anything like that done, please email friendpods@gmail.com and I'll take care
of it.

All feedback is welcome, but what I'm most interested in is if/how you could
see yourself using this. If you need some inspiration, try making a friendpod
for people you go out with on weekends, and give it a whirl tonight.

~~~
arfrank
Congrats! How are you liking the twilio API? And what is this built in/on?

~~~
GraffitiTim
The Twilio API is fantastic; I was able to build a basic demo in an hour or
two. The combination of the simple API with the knowledge that they're doing
all sorts of crazy stuff behind the scenes is pretty impressive.

The app is built using PHP/MySQL and a bit of jQuery. edit: and Google WebFont
loader, just to try it out.

~~~
citricsquid
They appear to suffer from outages sometimes though, which might be a problem.

~~~
johns
Can you elaborate on that?

------
jamram82
Few comments on minor details

Your definition of what friendpod is - includes the friendpod word itself.
Also I had read 4 lines to get to the line what friendpod is actually is. It
could be reworded as

friendpod is a group texting service. When one of you sends a text it goes to
everyone in your friendpod. Use it for \- your roommates \- people you go out
with on weekends \- friends from home \- a few coworkers

Friends from home ?. It doesn't make sense to me.

Also the other thing, there is a similar named website - friendspod.com ( a
service in India) offering vaguely similar service. Choice of website name
could have been better.

My $0.0.2

~~~
GraffitiTim
Thanks for the suggestions. I agree the explanation copy could use some work.
I was worried "group texting" might sound like one person being able to blast
a message out to a group, but I'm not sure.

Thanks for pointing out friendspod, I hadn't seen that. Agreed, a bit awkward.

------
csphy
I made a similar thing a few weeks ago (though much more crude) to use amongst
a group of friends who were living in the same apartment complex. One thing I
realized after I made it is that this general system of texting with Twilio is
not going to be cheap since if you have a lot of users each text could cost a
good portion of a dollar, nevermind if there were a conversation. You going to
foot the bill or have you found a way to make it cheaper?

~~~
GraffitiTim
I'm footing the bill, and yes it could easily get expensive. I'm waiting to
see if/how people use it before figuring that out.

------
patio11
Top right image should show user being awesome, not you being awesome, because
you are boring compared to the user (in their mind).

~~~
GraffitiTim
Good point, thanks.

edit: Improved it a bit based on your feedback

------
marknutter
Here's a suggestion, since I wanted to build something similar at some point.
You should allow the friends you text to send back a yes or a no as to whether
their in or out (interested or not interested in doing the proposed event).
I'm constantly having to text all my friends to find out if there are enough
people interested for things that require a certain number of people. For
instance, going out with 2 other friends.. not so fun. Going out with 4 other
friends, it's a party. Playing Settlers of Catan with 1 other friend... not so
fun. Playing Settlers with 3 other friends, game on!

You would add a trigger that would automatically send out confirmations that
the thing is going down when the threshold is met. Easy-peasey.

------
gsiener
Cool. You should check out GroupMe -- they have been working on a similar app
based on twilio.

~~~
bobds
<http://groupme.com/>

I really like the conference feature, call the group number and it initiates a
conference call with all group members.

------
arb99
IMO its pretty useless. Especially for iPhone users, like your example images
- because i've texted my normal bunch of mates as a group before, the iphone
keeps that message together with the group, and every week if i want to send
them a text i just find the last message i sent to them as a group, and their
numbers are still there.

i suppose it makes sense if you don't have this feature on your phone, but its
likely most phones will follow apple and have this feature in the near future.

also, more importantly i think, with no details on your homepage about costs,
there is no way i'd sign up for something like this. For all i know it could
rebill at $9.99 a week or something.

~~~
GraffitiTim
With friendpod, when someone replies it acts like a Reply All, which is what
makes this useful in my opinion. You can also add the group to your contacts.
It doesn't charge you.

~~~
arb99
Ah, completely missed that point about the Reply All kind of function

------
sethwartak
In this sentence (You can add up to 6 people, but less is fine.), you should
use the word "fewer" instead of "less".

Fewer is for finite, less is for infinite. (fewer apples, less flour)

------
Batsu
Strangely, I didn't like seeing the "We don't spam." I didn't even suspect it
with a cell number.

I understand it's a small website and all, but perhaps a tiny privacy policy
would be better?

More thoughts:

It occured to me that a lot of my friends probably don't have unlimited SMS,
which is fine, but you might want a way to blacklist a number? Everything is
all fun till money gets involved, after all =\

------
lachyg
Looks good, but I'd like too know more about how it works on the homepage. A
few things:

1\. Do you text a specific number, and then it broadcasts it to the entire
network? If not, I think that'd be great, because when replying to the
message, things get hard again.

2\. Does it work internationally (e.g. Australia, Canada, UK)? If not, specify
on the homepage!

Keep it up!

~~~
GraffitiTim
Thanks!

1\. Yeah, it sends everyone a specific number to add to their contacts.
Everyone in the friendpod sends and receives texts from that number. (If you
make a second friendpod you get a second number.)

2\. Ah, good point. Twilio SMS only works in US for now.

~~~
iworkforthem
pt 2. So I noticed. from Singapore. :P Like what I read so far, can't wait for
it to launch international. Promising work.

------
nopal
If I remember correctly, this is what Twitter was when it started. You may
want to see what issues they ran into that caused them to change their
product. Maybe that will help you know what to tackle and what to avoid. This
seems like a service that could be useful. Mailing lists for SMS.

~~~
GraffitiTim
If I'm not mistaken, early Twitter allowed you to follow people, so it was
still 1:many communication. I thought of the idea for friendpod because it
seems like "few:few" communication isn't very well addressed.

------
johns
Are you going to enter it in the lunch with USV contest?
[http://blog.twilio.com/2010/09/win-lunch-with-albert-fred-
an...](http://blog.twilio.com/2010/09/win-lunch-with-albert-fred-and-brad-
from-union-square-ventures.html)

------
jwegener
Looks a lot like groupme [http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/groupme-born-at-
techcrunch-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/groupme-born-at-techcrunch-
disrupt-secures-funding-and-launches/)

------
iampims
Change the handwritten font. It's barely legible and feels kind of
unprofessional. The top of the "F" of Friendpods seems cut off. And maybe
provide some use cases for your app.

