Google Voice barely supports MMS messages properly; I think it'll be a while before Twilio supports it (although I could be mistaken). If you're a Twilio folk on here, care to share roadmap?
Author of the blog post here. We get a lot of requests for MMS and it's something that we're looking into. In the meantime, I wanted to let people know about how Filepicker could be used with Twilio SMS, which I think is a cool use case.
You get even partially-functional MMS out of Google Voice? Is there a setting somewhere? I'm lucky to even get a blank message, normally I get nothing at all if someone sends an MMS to my GV number (iPhone, but same result on web)
It makes sense to pass files by reference rather than by value. This integration example would allow you to send files as urls via the SMS protocol instead of sending blobs of data.
Mobile network bandwidth is certainly a constraint in the US (cellular networks throttling high data usage subs is a proof of that). Viewed in that context pass by reference makes greater sense.
Would it be possible for users to send an MMS to an email address instead of a phone number? I don't mean using an email client. I mean type in a@example.com in the field where one would normally type phone numbers. I don't have email on my iPhone and I often use iMessage to email pics to myself.
You might not get 2-way communication easily but it could be a good option regardless.
But going the other way - sending an image via SMS/MMS to a user (which is what that post is about) - is a totally different animal. One in which you'd likely need to format specifically for different carriers and the like (and that's best case).
I can't speak to the Twilio API, but you certainly can with the Mogreet SMS/MMS api. When an MO (Mobile originated) message is received from your user, we decode and store any media included (like images!) and then we make a web services callback to your app with the message content, the info about the user that sent it in, and a url to the media payload of that MO message.
Anthor
Anthony here, Mogreet CTO. MMS is not at all like SMS under the hood. While links are theoretically supported, in practical real life the content (images, video, audio, etc) is encoded into the MM7 body, and delivered all together to the handset. Check out our docs online for much more about what you can do:
https://developer.mogreet.com/docs
This might be more than you asked for but here goes:
Cellular networks still have to interop with SS7. On most major large Cellular networks this is accomplished with a protocol called IMS. Integrated Multimedia Subsystem provides wrappers for non-IP transactions to allow IP controls over analog equipment. Put simply: stuff that isn't IP gets broken up and wrapped in IP before it can go on the network.
Because of this, and other factors, making a picture messaging system that operates over this structure is difficult. So difficult that virtually all of the MMSC (MMS Gateways) are proprietary and prohibitively expensive.
Why doesn't anyone support MMS? Because it costs too much.
Actually Mogreet offers it - for only $0.01 per send. https://developer.mogreet.com - they do MMS campaigns for the studios, media outlets, retailers etc and just opened their API last year. This is NOT SMS with a link but rather full blown MMS - audio, pictures, slideshows, video etc.
While I haven't done it personally, it is theoretically possible to use AT&T's new Call Management API (powered by Tropo) along with their MMS API to send MMS messages. I suggest you check out https://developer.att.com/developer/forward.jsp?passedItemId... for more info
You can send true MMS, means picture/video with in message body using txtimpact mms gateway, check out their developers api, http://www.txtimpact.com/mms-messaging.asp. simple to implement..
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 58.9 ms ] threadMobile network bandwidth is certainly a constraint in the US (cellular networks throttling high data usage subs is a proof of that). Viewed in that context pass by reference makes greater sense.
What is difficult about supporting MMS? No one seems to offer it.
You might not get 2-way communication easily but it could be a good option regardless.
I use this as an input method on http://montabe.com, for instance.
But going the other way - sending an image via SMS/MMS to a user (which is what that post is about) - is a totally different animal. One in which you'd likely need to format specifically for different carriers and the like (and that's best case).
anthor
Cellular networks still have to interop with SS7. On most major large Cellular networks this is accomplished with a protocol called IMS. Integrated Multimedia Subsystem provides wrappers for non-IP transactions to allow IP controls over analog equipment. Put simply: stuff that isn't IP gets broken up and wrapped in IP before it can go on the network.
Because of this, and other factors, making a picture messaging system that operates over this structure is difficult. So difficult that virtually all of the MMSC (MMS Gateways) are proprietary and prohibitively expensive.
Why doesn't anyone support MMS? Because it costs too much.
--Hugo