Messaging system that works on older text phones, PCs, in addition to feature and smart phones

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

"Steve G." <wordz2u at gmail.com> writes:

> The question:
>
> Is there a messaging platform that is either open source or free (I
> know of Viber and WhatsApp), BUT which can work on PC's AND cheap
> phones (either feature phones, or text only phones) in addition to
> smart phones. I believe that Viber runs on some tablet, but not
> generally. Whatsapp is limited, I think, to cell phones. 
>
> I am not sure if they can be used for older phones.
>
> Any ideas?

Eh, Twitter? ;-)

I don't use it, but AFAIK it is supposed to work on computers and cheap
phones, over low bandwidth networks, over SMS (duh: obviously!), etc. 

If I understand how it operates correctly it is not really suitable for
private chats, but I suspect you are primarily interested in broadcasts.

> I want to reach two levels of people - community health workers (CHW),
> and the people who receive their services. So there are two 'target
> audiences'. I can possibly provide CHW's with feature phones, but not
> expensive smart phones. Regular people will only, or mostly, have text
> phones, not smart phones. So I need a program that can send messages
> to groups of 10-200, on text only cell phones.

Feature phones can use Twitter. Really dumb phones that onlyq have SMS
can also use Twitter - it was an SMS service originally, as we all know.
I don't know if it is possible to set up a Twitter account via SMS (or
from a feature phone), but I would assume your CHW will visit some
office from time to time and can set up accounts for their "clients" who
can then activate them (sign up for updates) over SMS.

SMS in the 3rd world may present logistical difficulties. E.g., I don't
know is whether Twitter has geographical restrictions. It is not clear
to me how Twitter is supposed to pay for SMS updates that the user
*receives* in a contry where Twitter does not ave a presence (I mean, an
international SMS is sent - someone has to pay, right?). It is probably
documented. The problem will be common for any SMS-based solution, I
suppose.

A really "poor man's" solution is where your CHWs, who will presumably
have a small budget via government, supporting charities whatever, get
Twitter updates on their feature phones (over Internet, with
mobile.twitter.com, whatever) and then simply type a group SMS to their
"constituents": those updates will not be frequent and this may very
well be scalable enough (depending n how scalable group SMS realy is).
I don't know if it is possible to forward an individual tweet as an SMS
message.

http://support.twitter.com/articles/14014-twitter-via-sms-faqs

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | pub at goldshmidt.org