Pulse.To Makes Mass Texting Easy
Are you one of the many people that regularly sends text messages instead of a phone call or email? If so, then you should give Pulse.To a try, a new web and phone based social platform, built around mass text messaging.
Being able to send a specific text to more than one person is nothing new, in fact most modern cell phones have the ability to do that as standard. However, the amount of time and money spent sending individual texts to more than a couple of people tends to stop people from actually making use of this feature on any regular basis.
Pulse aims to make the experience more affordable (even free in some cases). So that friends, families, communities and corporations can all take advantage of the quick fire mass communication methods made possible through text messaging.
The system works through the utilization of ‘pulse groups’. These groups collect desired members phone numbers, which are put in by the user, who can set up as many different groups as they want. When someone is marked for inclusion into a pulse group, they will receive a text message asking them if they want to join, to which they must text back a “Yes” in order to receive further messages from the group.
To mass text their pulse group, all a user has to do is send a single text message to the corresponding pulse number, or log onto to the website and sent it out through there. Then everyone in the group should instantly receive the message.
Obviously someone has to pay for this mass texting service, if it’s not going to be you, then it will have to be someone else. That mean’s if you’re using a free Pulse.to account, the recipients of all pulse based texts will see advertizing as well as your message. There is a premium option which lets people disable the ads, which currently costs $10 per 100 pulses (that’s 1 cent per pulse compared to the 10-20 cents per message some networks charge).
For a bit of added oomph, you can also connect Facebook and Twitter accounts to pulse groups, to make what the site calls ‘life pulses’. By doing this members are telling Pulse to send out mass group texts every time they update their status’ on one of the two sites. A fairly interesting idea (for businesses at least), but personally I wouldn’t really want to receive a text every time someone I know decides to make another pointless status update.
To me the attractiveness of this platform is that it allows for concise, mass communication amongst a tightly controlled group of people, but only in those situations where it is actually called for. Texting has in many ways replaced the phone call, just as email has replaced the letter, Twitter and Facebook are places to blow off steam, talk about your life and cultivate contacts, whilst Pulse is just about simple, quick and effective communication.
A great idea, one which could well make this young start-up a lot of money over the next few years, whilst saving a fortune for it’s members.
Pulse.to is a great service! I tried it out after reading this article and have been using this for group text for my social groups. Keep up the recommendations!