
Twilio Is Crushing It: 150K Devs, 1.5M Phone Calls/Day, 500M Total Phone Calls - playhard
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/17/twilio-is-crushing-it-150k-developers-1-5m-api-calls-a-day-1b-total-phone-calls-expanding-to-20-more-countries/
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toomuchtodo
So, I'm going to be that guy.

Twilio makes its money on SMS and voice services. Those services are _cheap_
and very easy to develop with using Twilio.

Note though that most cellular carriers are moving towards data plans instead
of voice packages (Verizon especially) because most people use their
phones/mobile devices for data consumption, and less as phones. So while I
think Twilio provides fabulous value now, I feel like they're at the tail end
of the telephone-based telecommunications revolution. As people move more away
from POTS calls (and more towards Skype, Google Chat, iMessages, etc), the
need for phone calls and SMS messages will drop quite a bit, as they'll all be
handled over other services.

TL;DR Twilio has a shelf life. It'd be like developing services around a
shrinking but still necessary industry (like the postal service).

Disclaimer: I love Twilio. I went to last year's TwilioCon and have met
management.

~~~
johns
Voice communication is not going away any time soon. Twilio Client lets them
continue powering it for developers well into the future. (disclaimer: used to
work there)

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ryanhuff
I love Twilio, but every time I get a robocall to my cell phone selling me
cheap insurance, I cringe a little, and wonder if Twilio is enabling this. I
wish Twilio had a "is this a Twilio phone number" lookup so that I can report
such activity.

~~~
nostromo
I'm constantly amazed that we don't have "report as spam" for calls and sms
yet.

Apple could provide this quite easily, and it would be a huge differentiator.

~~~
martindale
We do; it's called Google Voice.

~~~
zurn
Unfortunately it's not available in most places.

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soldermont001
and they won't let you block "unknown" numbers.

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jlgreco
Frankly I am stunned that carriers even let those through in the first place.
Has there ever been a person in the history of telephony who wouldn't prefer
it if they could never receive calls from unknown numbers?

Then I remember that call centers probably rack up huge phone bills...

~~~
zurn
Many countries ban phone spam or have a centralised opt out list. A good side
of the regulated telecom world.

edit: replying to comment below, many countries have working opt out lists.

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jlgreco
I want to know why unknown number, regardless of actual origin (spam or
otherwise) is even permitted to go through PBXes or the like. Why isn't
everything in the network, including my phone, set to drop "unknown number"
calls right on the floor?

My phone should be saying to itself _"Hold on a second, am I about to turn on
the buzzer and display the text "Unknown caller" to the users? /dev/null it."_

~~~
zurn
Privacy/anonymity is a basic feature of any useful personal communication
mechanism as I hope you know. Snailmail supported it before the phone network,
and the internet supported it after the phone network. Though maybe people
have forgotten now that they've moved en masse to things like facebook (<rant
elided>...)

Maybe people don't know how to select this feature when they make calls? At
least in GSM based networks you can select it on a per call basis when dialing
(#31# prefix).

Eg. calling in anonymous tips to your local newspaper, communicating with an
annoying company you don't want calling back, etc.

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DHowett
_What exactly are they crushing?_ Is something here being physically
compacted?

If not, can we crush the use of "crushing it?" It's 2012. "Crushing it" isn't
any better now than "killing it" was in 2011.

~~~
josegonzalez
It's a metaphor. Quit raining on my startup troll parade.

~~~
DHowett
What's it a metaphor for?

Crushing things?

~~~
Jd
<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Crushing%20it>

I suspect that 'crushing it' first referred to standard usage of the male
sexual organ and later was extended to other usages.

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sethbannon
I'm glad to see such tremendous growth for such a tremendous service. Twilio
enabled us to get our VoIP functionality up and running quickly and we're
certainly grateful for it.

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brianbreslin
Has anyone with telephony industry experience written up a pros and cons and
comparison chart between twilio, tropo, telapi, plivo, etc?

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stuaxo
Ugh, what is it with this offputting language - their doing well, this isn't
some 80s frathouse movie.

This is almost as cringy as that picture of a young bill gates in a 'sexy'
pose.

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beering
Who are Twilio's competition? I know of textmarks, which serves a lot of sms
traffic, but there doesn't seem to be much else competing in this space.

~~~
agildehaus
Plivo. Really the only one. And they're awesome from what I've seen of them.
Volume pricing from the start too.

~~~
stanleydrew
Twilio does volume pricing from the start as well:

<http://www.twilio.com/voice/pricing#volume-pricing>

~~~
biot
Twilio's volume pricing for inbound calls only kicks in after 500K minutes.
You get that rate with Plivo for your first minute. Twilio's per-minute volume
pricing for over 15M minutes of outbound per month is still more expensive
than what you pay Plivo starting with your first outbound call. That's what
volume pricing from the start means.

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jnazario
awesome. i know one of the founders, when he told me what he was doing after
grad school i was surprised there's any money in it. shows you what i know!

super proud of that team, really great story all around.

