Twilio Company Blog - Discover Our Web Services API for Making & Receiving Phone Calls, Cloud Telephony

Introducing Our Ridiculously Simple Twilio SMS API

Update: This week's developer contest category is SMS.  Build a Twilio app using SMS and submit by midnight on Sunday, Feb 14th for your chance to win a Netbook.  More details on the contest page...

Today we're excited to announce the launch of our newest product: Twilio SMS.

Existing customers already know you can use Twilio to make and receive phone calls, and now you can also send and receive text messages from your Twilio phone numbers!  Starting today, all local Twilio phone numbers are SMS enabled, allowing you to write SMS applications as easily as you can write voice apps on Twilio.

We're ridiculously excited about Twilio SMS.  Previously, building SMS apps was hard... it could take months of negotiations, approvals, and hundreds or thousands of dollars up-front and every month to get started.  With Twilio SMS, it's as easy as buying a Twilio phone number from the Twilio account portal or Phone Numbers REST API for $1 / month, and immediately start receiving and sending text messages using Twilio's SMS REST API for just 3 cents per message.  No waiting period, no contracts, no hefty up-front costs... just $1 and your imagination.

Also, Twilio SMS is fully integrated into Twilio's voice functionality.  Need to send an SMS from inside a phone call?  Just drop our newest TwiML verb in there: <Sms> and Twilio will send a text message to the caller with whatever content you specify. 

For example: <Sms>Our hours are 9-5</Sms>

Get Started with Twilio SMS

Are you ready to explore the power of Twilio SMS? It's incredibly simple to start adding text messaging to your existing Twilio applications and web applications, and we've got the tools to help you get started:

• Introduction to Twilio SMS
• Twilio SMS Quickstart
• How To: SMS Notifications & Alerts
• REST API: SMS Documentation
• TwiML SMS Documentation

Customer Story: Salesforce.com

DreamForce 2009 was the biggest Salesforce conference yet, and when Salesforce.com needed to allow the 19,000 attendees to vote for the "Best in Show" Appy Award, they turned to Twilio SMS.

Their app received and tallied votes from the participants and responded in realtime with SMS confirmations.  With Twilio SMS and the Force.com platform, Salesforce developers only needed a few hours to build an app that scaled to Dreamforce-proportions.   

Read about how Salesforce used Twilio SMS at Dreamforce >>

Phone Number Price Reduction

We're also happy to announce that we are now able to lower the prices on all Twilio phone numbers.

Starting today, all local numbers are $1 per month, and all toll free numbers are $2 per month.  By aggregating the demand of many applications, we're able to lower costs for all Twilio customers... and now we're excited to see what applications are enabled by these improved phone number economics. The new pricing is automatically applied to your Twilio account, and you'll be charged the new prices next time your phone numbers renew.

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In the coming weeks we will expand our blog coverage to focus on Twilio developers using our new SMS API and we would love to hear about what you are building, and feature it here.  As always, if you have questions or concerns please feel free to contact us at help@twilio.com with questions, comments, and blog post ideas.  We're always listening and ready to help.

Be Local Wins Twilio Click-to-Call Contest with Salesforce Integration

Each week, we challenge Twilio developers to build applications in new categories through the Twilio Developer Contest.  We do this to encourage new use cases and also to help expand what you can imagine when it comes to voice communications.  Last week, we debuted our first Wordpress plugin: wp-click2call, which enables Wordpress users to embed a click to call widget in their blog with a single line of PHP code.

Winner: Be Local by David Jones

Congratulations to David Jones, creator of Be Local, a Twilio + Salesforce mashup.  "BeLocal" is a Click-to-Talk application that enables you to reach your customers by phone, no matter where they are in North America, and display a local caller id.

Whether you want to empower your Salesforce and drive sales,
or just have convenient local calling to your friends, family, and colleagues, "Be Local" is an easy application to get you started.

Features:

• * Displays local number so that the customer is more likely to take the call, and if they're not available at the moment, they're much more likely to call you back when they see it's a local number.  "
• * Handles the customer's return call, routing it back to you, wherever you are located.
• * Takes care of logging the details of both outgoing and incoming calls in Salesforce, so you can review them later, and generate sales reports.

How Be Local Works

Users of "Be Local" purchase local number packages (e.g., Southern California) that include a set of local area codes and prefixes (NPA, NXX) in the desired area.  When placing a call, "Be Local" finds the best match to the customer number, or else defaults to a toll-free 877 number as the caller id.

With "Be Local" installed on your Salesforce account, just select any Contact, and beside the friendly "Be Local" telephone icon are displayed up to 4 telephone numbers (Work, Home, Mobile, Other).  Just click the one you want.  "Be Local" will find the best matching local number and place calls to both you and your Contact, ... and connect the two of you together.  "Be Local" gets your phone number, and your Contact's phone number, from the information you have already entered in Salesforce, so there's nothing for you to type.  Just one click, and you're connected.

Updates Coming Soon...

Be Local will soon be rolling out additional features:

• Voice Mail
• Sales Call Recording
• Voice-to-Text transcriptions

all easily accessible right in Salesforce.

Customer Testimonial from Rich Rosen of FastCall411

The original idea for Be Local came from Richard Rosen, at FastCall411.com, and Be Local was designed and implemented by David Jones, at PairwiseAffinity.com

Just listen to what Rich Rosen, from FastCall411 has to say about "Be Local":

"I recently used the Maytag website to find a repairman and with several choices in Los Angeles I picked the local area code (323).  I was initially surprised that the repairman’s invoice had a 626 area code (Pasadena, CA) even though I have been in the call tracking business for several years. At the time I counted the second largest yellow page publisher as a call tracking client, but I didn’t immediately recognize the Market Expansion Line. Be Local is a great yellow pages tool that helps in areas like Los Angeles where we have lots of area codes in overlapping services areas."

-- Rich Rosen, FastCall411

David has won a Netbook, and some t-shirts for himself and his niece C.J. and nephew Alex (10 and 12 respectively) who provided marketing and moral support to him during development.  We will be announcing this week's contest category shortly, so stay tuned!  In the meantime, you can check out all the contest winners and applications since our contest launched almost a year ago.

Highlights from the Twilio Post Holiday Party

On Friday of last week we welcomed friends, family, customers, investors and other supporters (roommates, customers, vendors, etc) that have become a part of our community in the past year asince Twilio launched to the public in November 2007.  Together we shared food, drinks, and a champagne toast to an exciting 2010!

Here are some of the best pictures from the party, and you can see the rest of the set on Flickr.  Feel free to tag and comment to your heart's content!

Twilio Screencast Contest Winner - 3 minutes, 47 lines of code

Last week we challenged Twilio customers to a contest category with a twist.  Instead of building a Twilio application for a specific category, we asked developers to create screencasts with a maxiumum leth of 3 minutes that demonstrate how to build a Twilio application.

Justin Vaillancourt sis this week's contest winner with his screencast for Online Universal Product Code Lookup, where he shows viewers how to build a phone based application using Twilio that searches Google for a given UPC (universal product code) and returns the lowest cost available online for that product.

As Justin said in his submission, "47 lines of code, 3 minutes, truly amazing technology".  Thanks for your submission, and try the product by dialing: 1-866-572-5762.

New Developer Contest: Build Click-to-Call Integration

The winner of last week's developer contest for Twilio screencasts will be announced shortly, but we didn't want to wait to tell you about this week's category: Click-to-Call Integration.

You've got until 11:59pm on Sunday, February 7th, to make your submission.  Be sure to visit the contest page for all the details, and submit here.  Let us know if you have any questions, and happy coding!

What is Click to Call?

Click-to-call enables your company to convert web traffic into direct communication over the phone, with just the click of a button.  A simple form on your webpage allows visitors to enter their phone number, and with the click of the "call" button their information is routed to agents who can then contact them to provide help, support, and other services.

Twilio makes it easy to implement and integrate click-to-call directly into your web application.  To learn more check out the Twilio How To: Click to Call for sample code

Click to Call Integrations in Action

At Wordcamp Boston earlier this month, we shared a wp-click2call, a new Wordpress plugin that makes it easy for Wordpress users to add click-to-call functionality to their blogs and websites.

Twilio wp-click2call Plugin Launches at Wordcamp Boston from Twilio on Vimeo.

Integrations to Consider

Integration with any platform is fair game, no matter how many other click-to-call integrations have been done on it (including Wordpress). If there is a piece of software you are using every day that you think would benefit from connecting users with a single call, consider adding click-to-call functionality.  Here are some ideas to get you started:

• * Typepad
• * Zendesk
• * Twitter (see TweetToCall for an example) - maybe as a Firefox plugin?
• * Salesforce
• * Craiglist or Yelp (Firefox plugins?)

Bonus: Make a Screencast!

It's obviously not required, but we'd love to see you create a screencast explaining how to use your click-to-call integration. Think of it as a living, breathing FAQ. It's sure to grab the attention of your audience and is extremely helpful to visual learners. We will be releasing a screencast of how to use the wp-click2call plugin later this week.

Participate in Our Mini Contest This Week - Make a Screencast

It took a little while for us to announce the contest winners from last week's Twilio + Twitter mashup challenge.  So this week, instead of picking a category of applications and leaving you with just over 72 hours to write up the code, we're giving this week's contest a twist.

If you've been reading our blog and surfing our website, you might have noticed that we're hard at work producing screencasts and videos as another way to explain new Twilio features and demonstrate applications.  But why should we have all the fun?

Make a Video - Win a Flipcam and Screenflow

So now it's your turn.  You have until 11:59pm this Sunday, January 31st, to submit your video demonstrating how to build a Twilio app.  The only rules are that it must be uploaded on a publicly accessible website, and it must be no longer than 3 minutes.

Tips for a Good Screencast

I recently gave a 5 minute Ignite talk at Wordcamp Boston about the art of making great screencasts.  If you want to watch the video, it is embedded below, but here are the main points:

• pick a topic that can fit in 3 minutes
• draw a storyboard
• do a dry run
• go for continuous takes that don't require editing
• add voice overs
• distribute online for free (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)

TWO Winners for Last Week's Twilio + Twitter Mashup Contest

Update: You might have noticed we haven't announced a contest category for this week yet... stay tuned, we are going to have a "mini category" for now through Sunday.

For the past two weeks, we've challenged Twilio developers to mash up Twilio and Twitter to see how people will combine the real-time web and cloud communications.  Last week, the prize went to Wayne Dyck at the Washington State Department of Transportation for their Twitter direct message service which makes called to Twitter users with ferry and border crossing wait times.

As so often happens, we get many impressive submissions for our weekly developer contest an as the user base for Twilio continues to grow so does the breadth of ideas. When we see more than one application that is so good we can't talk about anything else to stop trying to convince the others it should win, then we give two prizes.  And that's what happened this week.  Without further ado, here are the TWO winners of last week's Twilio and Twitter mashup contest.

Group Call by Tim Lytle

GroupCall allows twitter users to host and manage a group conference call with a few simple clicks. Designed for group instruction, where one user speaks and the audience comments/participates via twitter. The call owners can unmute other participants if desired.

Give Group Call a Try

1. Visit: http://groupcall.timlytle.net
2. Login with Twitter
3. Click the 'host a call' link, then follow directions to join the call.
4. Send the join link to other users.
5. Refresh to update user list/twitter feed (sorry, no nice AJAX yet)
6. Mute/Unmute other callers.
7. Click end call link when you're done.

Music Monday by Mike Ivanov

Music Monday is the long-running tradition of posting your favorite songs on Twitter so that others can discover interesting new music.  My app lets you listen to tweets that contain MP3s.  You can skip songs you don't like so much, and it keeps a list of everything that was played and what you liked.

When you go to the website, put in your phone number for a list of everything you heard.  It's a fun way to kill a few minutes while discovering new music.  You may hate some songs and love others, but you never know what you will hear!

Give Music Monday a Try

First, call (866) 583-6913 and enter PIN 3969-6376.  Listen to some tunes and see if you like any of them.  After you hang up, go to http://mivanov.info/musicmonday and put in the phone number from which you called.  You will get a list of all the tweets and songs you heard with links to the original tweets on Twitter.  From there you can follow, retweet, and reply as usual.

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Learn more about our weekly developer contest, and how you could win a Netbook, by visiting our contests page.  We announce a new contest category every Monday, and submissions are due by 11:59pm on the following Sunday.  Email help@twilio.com if you have suggestions for contest categories, or any ideas for how we can keep this contest fun and exciting.  Thanks!

Special Offer for Y Combinator Companies

At the beginning of 2010 a batch of new startups are getting underway in the Y Combinator program and we'd love to see them using Twilio. 

Last May we made an offer to Y Combinator companies to credit their Twilio accounts with $133.70 to use towards building their business, and we're doing it again now.  If you're a Y Combinator company and you'd like to claim your credit, just send us am email from your founders@ email address to help@twilio.com.

To learn more about Y Combinator and the companies that are a part of it, check out their blog, and applications are still open for Summer 2010 cycle.

Y Combinator Companies That Are Live

The ones that are currently launched (per the Y Combinator website) are: Reddit, Loopt, ClickFacts, Snipshot, Inkling Markets, Wufoo, Thinkature, JamGlue, Scribd, Weebly, Virtualmin, Buxfer, Octopart, Heysan, Justin.TV, OMGPOP, Xobni, Zecter, Adpinion, Fuzzwich, Bountii, Songkick, Auctomatic, Disqus, Splashup, Draftmix, Etherpad, Webmynd, RescueTime, Heroku, Tipjoy, Addmired, Socialbrowse, Wundrbar, Chatterous, Mixwit, Snaptalent, Clickpass, Insoshi, MightyQuiz, 280 North, Dropbox, Posterous, Anyvite, TicketStumbler, PopCuts, Ididwork, Startuply, Picwing, CO2Stats, PollEverywhere, Backtype, ContestMachine, Frogmetrics, ZumoDrive, Heyzap, FathomDB, Foodoro, Divvyshot, Echodio, Cloudkick, AirBnb, TheSixtyOne, Vidly, Voxli, Bump, RentHop, Listia, FanChatter, HighlightCam, FlightCaster, Directed Edge, RethinkDB, Olark, DailyBooth, Mixpanel, and WakeMate.

Exploring the Power of Voice in Blogging at Wordcamp Boston

This past weekend we headed to Boston to hang out at Microsoft Research (lovingly called the NERD Center, for New England Research and Development) on the M.I.T. campus at Wordcamp Boston, and meet the passionate people gathering to learn and share their skills around Wordpress. 

Wordpress is a powerful content management and blogging platform created by Automattic, with a highly active developer community focused on improving Wordpress.org, the open source version, and building themes, plugins and other productivity tools for content publishers.

Talking Twilio & the Future of Voice in Blogs on the Unconference Track

As part of the Wordcamp program, attendees could propose 30 minutes talks that the audience would then vote on.  The talks with the greatest number of votes received an afternoon spot and our talk about using voice on your blog was one of the ones selected.  Check out the talk and brainstorming session lead by Danielle:

Twilio wp-click2call Plugin Launches at Wordcamp Boston from Twilio on Vimeo.

Try the wp-click2call Plugin For Yourself

Our simple click to call plugin is live now and available for download on the Wordpress repository.  We've also open-sourced the code and you will find it on Github. 

To get started all you need to do is:

• * Download the wp-click2call plugin
• * Activate the plugin in your Wordpress install
• * Configure the admin settings of the plugin with your Twilio account details and preferences
• * Add the code snippet anywhere on your blog (sidebar, header, body, etc.)

If you have questions about how to use this plugin, or suggestions for how we can bring voice and telephone to your blog, please drop us a note at help@twilio.com, we're always listening and are looking forward to discussing your ideas and planning for the future.

Twilio Talks Cloud Telephony for the Enterprise at ITEXPO

This week, we're in Miami Beach for the annual Internet Telephony Expo & Conference, where we're meeting with and learning from individuals in the telecommunications industry.  This year, the addition of the Cloud Communications Summit has made it more relevant than ever before for companies like Twilio to participate in discussions around the future of telecommunications.

We're passionate about helping our customers in improving business processes, revolutionizing voice development, and in the process we're changing the landscape for APIs, providers, resellers, and everyone in the value chain.  This is why the discussions around cloud communications are so interesting, deep, and varied.

Attending ITEXPO? 

Cloud Telephony for the Enterprise at 12:00pm

The panel will be moderated by Thomas Howe, and the panelists are Troy David of Cloudvox, Dan York of Voxeo and our own Evan Cooke.  The session discusses tradeoffs in deploying communications applications behind the firewall, with a hosted partner or through elastic mechanisms such as Amazon’s EC2.

View the full agenda for the Cloud Communications Summit; the event runs from 9am to 3pm and you can still register to attend here.

Can't Make It?  Watch the Video

You don't have to come all the way to Miami to learn about cloud communications. We'll be filming Evan's talk, and posting it to our blog as soon as it is edited down (hopefully later today).

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Are you interested in meeting with Evan to discuss how cloud telephony can benefit your business?  Contact help@twilio.com to coordinate an onsite meeting at ITEXPO in Miami this week, or to set up a phone call.  Members of the press please contact press@twilio.com.  Thanks!