{"id":2345,"date":"2009-09-04T06:22:34","date_gmt":"2009-09-04T14:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=2345"},"modified":"2009-09-04T06:23:54","modified_gmt":"2009-09-04T14:23:54","slug":"group-text-messaging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2009\/09\/04\/group-text-messaging","title":{"rendered":"Group Text Messaging"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/44124484443@N01\/71805821\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/20\/71805821_730ea4e28d_m.jpg?w=840\" alt=\"7001 New Messages?\" title=\"7001 New Messages?\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" class=\"right\"><\/a><br>\nFor a few years, Facebook was one of the best ways to connect with college students. Not any more. It\u2019s still useful, but not nearly as useful as it used to be. The novelty has worn off and so students aren\u2019t as responsive on&nbsp;it.<\/p>\n<p>So <a href=\"http:\/\/stevelutz.wordpress.com\/2009\/08\/31\/reports-of-facebooks-death-exaggerated-the-chronicle-of-higher-education\/\">like Steve Lutz<\/a> I\u2019ve been thinking about text messaging lately. My younger students (frosh and sophomores) seem to be much more likely to have unlimited texting plans than my upperclassmen and grad students.<\/p>\n<p>In the past I\u2019ve just texted people individually, but now I\u2019m experimenting with group text messaging services.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I considered using Twitter and telling people to <a href=\"http:\/\/getsatisfaction.com\/twitter\/topics\/can_non_twitter_users_follow_by_sms\">subscribe via text<\/a>. A few problems:<br>\na) College students don\u2019t use twitter.<br>\nb) It centralizes the communication too&nbsp;much.<br>\nc) I don\u2019t feel confident in twitter\u2019s reliability.<br>\nd) The verb \u201ctweet\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>So I\u2019ve been looking into other services. So far I\u2019m drawn to <a href=\"http:\/\/txtblaster.com\/xastanford\">txtBlaster<\/a>. The thing I like best is that I can deputize as many of the subscribers as I want and allow them to text the entire group, so I can make this a student-driven thing. It\u2019s a free (ad-supported) service. They claim to screen their ads carefully and to target them based on the type of group you set up. So far so good on that&nbsp;front.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Do you&nbsp;have<br>\na) any thoughts on using text messaging effectively as a ministry tool?<br>\nb) another service to recommend (such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.textmarks.com\">TextMarks<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/txtsignal.com\/\">txtSignal<\/a> or even the maligned <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/\">Twitter<\/a>)?<\/p>\n<p>P.S. If you want to see txtBlaster in action, feel free to text <strong>xastanford<\/strong> to <strong>25278<\/strong>. I\u2019ll be playing around with it for the next few&nbsp;days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For a few years, Facebook was one of the best ways to connect with college students. Not any more. It\u2019s still useful, but not nearly as useful as it used to be. The novelty has worn off and so students aren\u2019t as responsive on&nbsp;it. So like Steve Lutz I\u2019ve been thinking about text messaging lately. \u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2009\/09\/04\/group-text-messaging\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \u201cGroup Text Messaging\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek","category-resources-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-BP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2345"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2361,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2345\/revisions\/2361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}