messaging topics by TJ Thinakaran
From Monday, November 25, 2024, to Monday, December 2, 2024—i.e., the e-commerce Cyber Week—Twilio sent over 5.2 billion messages and processed over 65.5 billion emails.…
Two-factor authentication (2FA) is really just two-password authentication. You’re required to remember one long-term password and one short-term password. If you rarely use the system…
Attentive hit 620 million texts on Black Friday; Klaviyo sent 420 million messages (email + text) in just one hour that day. Building on last…
Shopify merchants smashed records with $5 billion in Black Friday sales, peaking at $4.6 million per minute. If Shopify had a banner season, you can…
Some unsolicited career advice: When the platform owner invites you to partner with them, say yes. In telecom, if an operator asks for your help,…
The WSJ's Joanna Stern recently highlighted the frustrations many of us share around text messaging spam, and the tools and tactics she covered were spot-on—some…
The first woman to win the Marconi Prize; a spectrum auction innovator and trailblazing regulator; and two entrepreneurs who brought wireless connectivity to underserved areas.…
The morning of my fireside chat with Vonage CEO Niklas Heuveldop at the ConnectMobile stage, the GSMA released a report stating that wireless operators were…
Like last year, this year’s Somos Summit exceeded expectations. There were new voices and topics but the recurring theme was the same: to trust more,…
I started my plea to invest aggressively in RCS with thirteen rapid-fire questions to assess your RCS readiness. Some of you shared that you had…
Did the “Hello World” version of your RCS demo embarrass you? Does your company have a public RCS demo? How does your customer get started?…
Describing iConectiv merely as a number information provider would be an oversimplification. In North America alone, it operates three core registries: LERG (how phone calls…
An "FU Meter" measures aggregate negative responses to a text messaging campaign. While standard opt-out monitoring captures responses to explicit commands like STOP, END, or…
Ready for an apolitical discussion about political text messaging? I will be joining Stefan Heller, Brien Jones-Lantzy, Stephanie Lashley, Anna Quint and Julie Sweet (moderator)…
“I didn’t know that’s how it [10DLC] all worked,” I overheard an audience member say at the MEF Leadership Forum in Miami in 2023. The…
ICYMI, if you updated to iOS 18 Beta 2 in the US, cross-platform RCS works for you, though only for text messages—it still falls back…
With 117% Net Dollar Retention (NDR), $15 million net cash flow, and 44% of revenue from non-US customers, Braze delivered a strong quarter despite a…
ICYMI, iOS 18 Beta is out. Of course, I used this opportunity to see if I could get a mini Mr. Watson moment. It did…
I’m starting a personal catalog of RCS showcases that will be amazing on both iOS and Android. The goal is to test interoperability and see…
Ronak Shah talked about redesigned tap backs and scheduled messages, text formatting and text effects, and iMessage and SMS via satellite. He spoke of how…
At this year’s WWDC, Apple might disclose the workings of the RCS-iMessage bridge. While major announcements around AI are expected, many hope Apple sheds light…
For anything beyond one-way notifications, SMS offers a terrible user experience. It supports only 160-character texts, rudimentary images, emojis, and little else. Any functionality beyond…
ICYMI, last month four states experienced a 911 outage due to the oldest reason in network operations: cutting the wrong cable. Jokes aside, the workaround…
Overall, the cohort delivered double-digit revenue growth but with some disclosing single-digit declines; many showed no appetite for M&A, but one is evaluating eleven acquisitions;…
Pricing is critical to RCS success. If priced too low, it dilutes the medium and turns it into a source of spam. If priced too…
Stephanie’s "One Expert, One Topic" column reminded me of our collaboration on the ADP RCS 2FA use case. Implementing 2FA on RCS addressed a significant…
Mobile operators charge companies to access their SMS networks. These charges, commonly known as pass-thru fees, are immune to the sender's purchasing power. In fact,…
Much to the relief of industry insiders, Twilio is keeping its Segment business. Some feared that Twilio would bow to investor pressure, and that would…
In a series of posts I call ‘the Klaviyo papers’ I wrote about Klaviyo’s business model. Klaviyo, like Attentive before it, and Twilio before it,…
ICYMI, T-Mobile announced fines on senders of spam content that went into effect in January and an update (thanks, Glenn Richards) that went into effect…
Upland announced its Q4 results. While it beat its Q4 guidance, its 2024 guidance gives no clarity about the company’s future directions. The company will…
Twilio, Sinch, and LinkMobility together brought in a total $7.6 billion in revenue for 2023, and there are three learnings from their earnings reports. Efficiency…
Watch, as I geek out like a Trekkie at Comic-Con. I’ve been attending the Wireless History Foundation’s (WHF) Hall of Fame dinner for several years…
New in 2024, Caitin Long and Zach Kunkel are cohosting a new series, The State of Business Messaging. I had the chance to share my…
With Verizon’s announcement last week, the US support of RCS is now at 100%. This, combined with Apple’s Thanksgiving surprise, means that RCS will work…
Industry conferences, like the Pacific Telecommunications Council’s (PTC) conference, are hotbeds of collaboration. They often have a festival-like atmosphere, with multiple stages serving as focal…
In the latest round of Q3 earnings in the CPaaS sector showed a steady march towards profitability and responsible growth. Growth and the CPaaS Market…
In this morning's email, my thoughts on the recently concluded Somos, Inc. summit, including:1. clarifying my first-ever on-the-record future predictions,2. KYC is good friction (ask your car…
Every brand needs to have an RCS strategy, even in the US, where interoperability issues and sub-25% device penetration have CMOs questioning whether the investments…
Fred Hillebrand, a Wireless Hall of Fame inductee and SMS inventor, is the editor of a scholarly work on the history of SMS. This compact…
A spam-free network exists solely in marketing copy. All networks, regardless of size, experience spam. Every network operator recognizes this and relies on feedback loops…
Recently, I had the opportunity to organize the content for the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) leadership conference in Miami, an event that brought together some…
Today, recipient feedback is a blunt instrument. You can either entirely block a number on your device, or submit the offending message to 7726 and…
There are 7 billion textable cell phones deployed on 750 mobile networks. This ubiquity and diffused oversight makes SMS spam impossible to stop and unwieldy…
One of the highlights of my September was the recently concluded Mobile Ecosystem Forum’s MEF Connects USA conference. I helped bring together a lot of…
I knew writing about Twilio's ZipWhip acquisition would take time. I didn't expect it would require over 6,000 words across six posts. Of all the posts,…
Wireless networks are universal, pervasive, and heterogeneous. They are a fertile testbed for interoperability-driven innovation. Text messaging is but one example of how complex event…
In the payments industry, your leverage is your proximity to the payment providers: Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. In the messaging industry, your leverage is…
In 2016—the year it went IPO—Twilio had 36,000 customers paying it $270M to transmit messages. This was an eight-fold increase in revenue and a three-fold…
Twilio paid $800 Million to acquire ZipWhip. At 10x revenue, the valuation was high for the asset. As deals go, it wasn't the biggest in…
US customers sent 2.2 trillion text messages in 2020. In other words, the wireless operators have created a big party—one which application developers, marketers, and software companies…
A startup is a lonely endeavor that never works alone. It works with a dominant player, whether in an app store like a marketplace or…
Once it has won over the geeks and early adopters, new technology needs to win the heart of the everyday user. You do that by…
When it comes to bandwidth, 5G is like having your cake and eating it too, in this case the cake is double chocolate, no fat*.…