SMF For Free Support Forum

Is it possible to set up mass texting utilities like the ones used on Twitter, and also how do I set up chat windows?

A chat program or a way to twitter your posts/topics?

The ability to record each members phone numbers to send and receive texts, and to either upload posts VIA text, and also to send out mass texts to members to keep them up to date. I have a member tying to get my other members to migrate to Twiter. If we have at least the ability to send mass text messages VIA our forum it will keep us competitive!

O

The problem with text messages is it costs money to send and receive texts. I was an SMS/email marketing developer.
I could do sms via email but deliver is not guaranteed.

ur costs are covered by members donations, what kind of costs are involved?  You and I can both see that with the emergence of social forums, all over the net, that it will be a matter of offering our members comparable tools with all the other sites to remain relevant. Unfortunatly for us, Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter all have substantially more advertising revenue! If these site ever decide to charge the members for their services, then people will migrate to other places! It seems as though Facebook is now taking people from Myspace, at least in my area.

SMS sending gets expense quickly such as sending 1000 sms messages costs about $60 though normal api plans
http://www.clickatell.com/pricing/pricing_wizard.php

How the hell is twitter getting away with it? They must be billing it back to the customer. When I recieved a text from then their message, stated "standard text messaging rates apply"!

They have deals with the major carriers to lower their cost but SMS is part of Twitter's big cost. You see people are getting billed both ways.
The carrier is charging people for sending it.
And the carriers are then charging people for receiving the message as well..

So in the end they win

They have got to be publically traded. I suspect in that case that there are very powerful people that realize that people are migrating from traditional media sources, and they are funding these sites in an effort to streamline traffic to sell consensus. Must be nice to have a seemingly endless advertising budget. There has got to be a way to offer these text services to all of your members. Question is is it worth it for SMF to offer it, and do you have the bargaining leverage to negotiate rates lower then what any of us individual site administrators can?  I hope this becomes an affordable option In the future.

I have unlimited texting and Internet access. Most of the time when I get on here during the week I am here from my phone.

I do like the idea of SMF For Free having SMS, but you have to take into consideration, that, even though SMF will not charge you for SMS, like what Sibyl said, not everyone has the unlimited plans, and it may charge them for every new post on their forum and what not. That could make their bills above the clouds.

I understand and agree will all that was said, I don't want each member having the ability to send out mass texts, just the staff. I think Twitter is stupid, I liken it to that movie with Jim Carey, "The Truman Show'. The member of Ford Fanatic that is trying to get members to migrate from our forum to Twitter, thinks enough of herself that she believes people want to know what her every thought is every second of the day. She posts allot of non-sense that gets mass texted to all of her indoctrinated followers.

 Our site is a union based forum, and due to the utilities available on the net it is now possible for us to get sensitive documents VIA PDF files over the net almost instantly. In the last three sets of contract negotiations We had proposed contract language within min. after the documents were completed. If we had a cost efficient way to send out mass text messages, we could let our members know immediately once important information has been posted. This will stir interest to build traffic, and help to draw in new members.

For instance if we receive new important info, we can post it, then send out a notification via text to all registered members. If the moderators here have access to my admin options they can check back to my forum stats. My best month ever I had;

Monthly Summary     New Topics     New Posts     New Members     Most Online
March 2009                   151                  1449             106                  22

This was due to me acquiring the new proposed contract before anyone else. I also advertised it on our competitors forum with a LINK. On my best day ever, I had 42 people registering as members simultaneously.  It was all due to our resources. After the heat was off traffic tappers, but adding this type of text feature would make our site unique in the manor I am suggesting on using it. I could be growing much quicker, however this site is nearly 100% devoted to UAW workers, and is used almost solely to conduct union business. Meaning it is not that broad a market, however the business conducted there is important to the livelihood of many people.

I understand the that such a feature could not be free, but I think SMF could negotiate better terms, because of the potential volume of business that they could offer SMS. I doubt that any one of the individual site administrators here would be able to negotiate better terms! Even Twitter does have costs, I did a little checking;

Finances
Twitter's old San Francisco headquarters located on the 4th floor of 539 Bryant Street

In total, Twitter has raised over US$57 million from venture capitalists. The exact amounts of funding have not been publicly released. Twitter's first round of funding was for an undisclosed amount that is rumored to have been between $1 million and $5 million.[16] Its B round of funding in 2008 was for $22 million[17] and its C round of funding in 2009 was for $35 million from Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital along with an undisclosed amount from other investors including Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital and Insight Venture Partners.[16] Twitter is backed by Union Square Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital, and Bezos Expeditions.[18]

The Industry Standard has remarked that Twitter's long-term viability is limited by a lack of revenue.[19] Twitter board member Todd Chaffee forecast that the company could make money from e-commerce noting that many users may want to buy items directly from Twitter since they already use it to get product recommendations and since companies already use it to promote products.[20]

Some of Twitter's documents covering revenue and user growth were published on TechCrunch after they were retrieved by the hacker, Croll Hacker. These contained internal projections that in 2009 they would have revenues of $400,000 in the third quarter (Q3) and $4 million in the fourth quarter (Q4) along with 25 million users at the end of the year. The projections for the end of 2013 were $1.54 billion in revenue, $111 million in net earnings, and 1 billion users.[1] No information about how Twitter plans to achieve those numbers has been published. Biz Stone published a blog post suggesting legal action for revealing the details was a possibility.[21

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

I wish I had their budget!