Next2.us provides place-based, topic-driven social network by SMS in the United States and Kenya. The solution allows users to connect together around place and common topics of interests. Text messages are automatically exchanged based on user's location, overlay of sharing circle between users and message keywords. Please see SMS Instructions Page (above) to register your mobile phone and start your Next2.us account.
If you have already registered your mobile phone you can use Next2.us mobile version to send text messages, change your settings or post content to your account http://m.next2.us
I've been kicking myself trying to figure out how to get twitter to operate 2-way sms when I think all I really need to do is provide my own long and short codes through an SMS gateway provider. Amazing, call me an idiot. It takes about 2 weeks to implement and I can even contract with provider to give me data the way I want through their front end processing. Very cool.
Long code number will be UK based.
Customer pays for call.
I can see why Twitter stopped two-way messaging due to cost.
Took me week and half to figure out what was staring me right in face. I was busy looking at how to install my own open source gateway when I did not realize how ubiquitous SMS is.
I have been following Dave Winer and Jay Rosen's Rebooting the News. Awhile ago I sent Jay a link to the auto-tweets post but I don't think he saw the relevance of auto-tweets to rebooting the news and specifically Jay's idea that what is needed is an assignment desk where anyone can create or apply for "news" assignments.
As I build the Hungry Garden software one of the premises was the ability to allow anyone to publish data to a Google Map and classify that post by various criteria such as what it is about, or for whom it is written. So anyone can come to Hungry Garden, sign-up, mark their location on a map and set the radius in miles from their location of the area within which they want to "share" their data.
Further, when someone post content they classify or tag the data by subject term. For example they can choose NEWS and then one of the sub categories of NEWS is ASSIGNMENT. SInce user can tag content as either something they "have," "want" or "discuss" the system has the ability to help those that want assignments or would be willing to cover a local meeting or event with those users that have an event or meeting that they want information about.
I am sure this is not exactly what Jay has in mind but it may provide some tools and assistance in creating an assignment desk for local journalist/bloggers. Here is a link to the HG bookmarklet that lets user post content to HG/Google Map and sends the post as tweet on Twitter
If Twitter ever is going to reach 1 billion users they'll need to re-think the turning off of SMS messaging in developing countries which they undertook in 2008. By only allowing one-way sending of text to tweet, Twitter effectively locks themselves out of one of the fastest growing segments of users -- low-end, simple cell phones that support SMS text messaging. By only supporting the sending of SMS text there is no way for farmers, businesses, governments or citizens to receive a reply SMS text from Twitter to log-in, or create, a Twitter account. Twitter is basically turned off for much of the world's inhabitants.
With Hungry Garden's autotweets, Twitter could allow SMS users to send and receive tweets based on the user's location and interests. Hungry Garden could use Twitter to support new and innovative programs such as The Backpack Farm Agricultural Program.
Backpack Farm provides everything a farmer needs to farm in sub Saharan Africa for one year. To support the program Hungry Garden's tweet "auto-responders" would allow farmers to send simple SMS messages that start with particular hashtags. Twitter would then turn the messages into tweets and display them at the farmer's Twitter account. Hungry Garden then reads the farmers accounts and automatically matches messages and exchanges them based on the hashtags used by the farmer, the farmer's location and the farmer's privacy setting.
This is not a program where farmers just send SMS messages to each other or to central organization. This is an organic way for farmers to find and communicate with other farmers so they can help each other grow food and build markets for their products.
