Create free “Group SMS” service using Google SMS Channels

Did you ever wish for an SMS service similar to Yahoo Groups or Google Groups???

A service that you could help you send your one SMS to all your friends and if any one of them reply to it… the reply goes back as an SMS to mobile phone of all you friends in the group.

Well here is a cool usage of Google SMS Channels to create a similar service…..but before going into details…

Catch this situation…

One lazy Sunday afternoon in Pune, sitting at home you feel like planning to watch a late night movie show….You type an SMS and send it to 6 of your friends to check who is interested to join you. Minutes later you start getting all types of queries.. one wants to watch “Drona” the other friend is ok with any movie but only in “Inox” … the third one can watch any movie but only in “Rahul cinema”…. while you start trying to collaborate using only SMS (as its only 10 paise per SMS) you actually end up doing 2-3 round robin of calling everyone to bring all to a conclusion…… Total time taken : 30 minutes

Now the same situation using “Group SMS”…

One lazy Sunday afternoon in Pune, sitting at home you feel like planning to watch a late night movie show….You type an SMS and post it to your “Google SMS channel”. All your friends receive this message (as an SMS on their mobile) as they have subscribed to your channel… now everyone post back to the channel (reply the SMS) what their preference is (You have set up your Google SMS channel in such a way that it allow its subscribers to post messages).

Everyone’ s SMS is further relayed to all other friend’s mobile handsets..  and after 2-3 iterations (posting back SMS on the group)  you come to a unanimous plan. Total time taken : 5 minutes

Before winding up here are few simple steps you need to take to create your own cool SMS group!!!!!

Step 1

• Start your own SMS channel
• Click on “Try now>>” under “Create your own channel” onhttp://labs.google.co.in/smschannels/browse
• Give name to your channel say “CoolGroup”
• Do not select any Data Source
• Set ‘Allow publishing by’ to ‘Any subscriber’
• Set ‘Who can subscribe’ to ‘By invitation only’

Step 2

• Invite your friends using “Invite others”

Step 3

• All your friends will receive an invitation SMS from Google on your behalf
• They need to send an SMS ‘ON CoolGroup’ to 9870807070
• and later ‘accept’ to 9870807070 to accept the terms and conditions

Step 4

• To post a message to the channel (sending SMS to all your friends) any of the members can send an SMS   to 9870807070
• In this case it will be sending an SMS ‘CoolGroup Hi all wanna go 4 any movie 2nite?’ to 9870807070
• This message will reach everyone’s mobile to which they can further reply back using the same method

Google SMS channels are poised to bring a complete revolution in the way we exchange information today!  People are already exploring ways to innovate cool applications using Google SMS channels….

So keep exploring the countless possibilities and do keep me posted…