We get asked how much information can be shared via text message. Not surprisingly, many people don’t think it is much, even considering the average mobile user manages to share a lot of info with friends, family and co-workers texting from their mobile phones.

In 1984 when SMS (Text Messaging) was invented, Friedhelm Hillebrand decided on 160 characters because it was the average amount of characters that fit on a typical postcard in those he counted. The postcard above (written by Rush drummer Neil Peart in 1984, the very same year SMS was invented) is 254 characters including sign off and his name. If you haven’t seen one of Neil’s drum solos, they are truly amazing, but also a tad longer than your average rock drum solo and worth every second (scroll to the 6 minute mark in the video below if you don’t have time to watch the whole thing).

98.15 Characters (61.4%)

That is the average number of characters in an outbound response from our clients to their patrons, students and customers. The important thing to remember is that ultimately, users understand the medium they’re using. Text messaging is conversational and short, but plenty of information can be shared in a single text message.

So what does 160 characters look like?

Here’s my personal favorite quote (from Charles Kingsley), I try to live by it every day. 159 characters including the quotation marks:
“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”

For Text a Librarian customers who are less like Charles Kingsley and more like Neil Peart, we enabled you to send longer responses, automatically breaking them over several text messages when needed.

We have a handful of new features coming up over the next month, but wanted to quickly let you know about our Bit.ly generator, suggested by our customers as a “great to have” feature.

Bit.ly is a handy URL shortening technology that makes it easier to crunch long urls into less characters. Now with Text a Librarian, you can paste a long URL, check the Bit.ly box and it will shorten it for you.

After librarians send the message, if they mouse over the bitly link, it’ll show them what the real URL looks like, see below for an illustration.

More features and exciting updates coming soon!

Thanks,

The Text a Librarian Team

We always wear our Text a Librarian T-Shirts (especially because we just got them in new colors). To work, on the weekends, whenever. Other than my “You Don’t Like Clowns?” tee from Headline Shirts, my Text a Librarian shirt starts the most conversations of any I wear. People always smile, some understand it immediately, some ask what it is and how it works, but the number one thing we hear is “I didn’t know you could do that!” Then, when we explain the context of it, being able to ask reference questions, see if a book is available and put it on hold, get notices about events happening in the library, the next thing always said is “what a great idea” followed by asking us which libraries offer the service.

Whether you use our service or someone else’s, we encourage you to keep letting everyone know you can Text a Librarian. More people will be pleased to know!

We now have video tours / tutorials of Mosio’s Text a Librarian available on the Text a Librarian website. They were made as a way of showing how the service works for those unfamiliar with it, but also as a video training guide for new customers. You’ll also notice two new features coming up soon that are part of regular Text a Librarian packages. We’ll be announcing them officially soon enough, so for now you can watch and see if you can find them.

The first one, showing how to receive and respond to incoming patron text message questions is below or you can view all of them at www.textalibrarian.com/video-tour.php

As we gear up for another ALA Annual the company has had some interesting discussions on new announcements and our directions in the world of library software.

A couple of weeks ago I had a great meeting/conversation with one of our partners and the discussion of library customer service came up. At the end of our partner meeting, someone said “we can give patrons access to all of the data in the world, but if we aren’t there for them from a customer service standpoint, it won’t matter.” Very true. Andy Woodworth’s blog post “Why Closing More Public Libraries Might Be the Best Thing (…Right Now)” [link below] came up in an internal company meeting, specifically his two points about customer service and advocacy (from the comments it seems the post got a lot of people talking).

The idea of improved customer service, whether at libraries or businesses in general, will continue to be a significant function of an organization’s success in the information age. Aaron Tay’s recent blog post about regularly scanning Twitter and the web for feedback is great (he gives some tips on how to do so) [link below], obviously taking a page from what many companies are doing as part of their customer service: listening to social media mentions for good and bad comments. Neither are the first to talk about the ongoing need for pro-active/reactive customer service in libraries, but both are current and relevant.

So what does this mean for Mosio and Text a Librarian?

We’re still very new to libraries and we LOVE working with them. Frankly, we’re just getting started. While we have friends who are librarians and have a handful of amazing people advising us, we’re not librarians ourselves, nor have we ever pretended to be. In many ways we see this as a distinct advantage to building our product: we cast aside any preconceived ideas of how things should be done and focus instead on simplicity, usability and feedback from our customers. We also know the inner workings of mobile technologies, enabling us to offer reliable (and certified) mobile services to libraries. We recently made an announcement that Mosio’s Text a Librarian is being used by over 500 academic and public libraries. It’s something we’re very proud to have accomplished in such a short amount of time, but we could not have done it without listening to the people who matter most to our success, the librarians who use our software with the benefit of communicating with more patrons on-the-go. The combination of our expertise and passion about creating an amazing library service will continue to be the keys to our ongoing success.

Text Messaging: It’s Not Just for Reference Anymore

In the same announcement we also mentioned that Mosio is now offering our full list of mobile services to libraries. Text messaging can be used for so many things beyond virtual reference and we’re set up to offer additional services to the benefit of our customers. We’re thrilled to be able to continue working with new and existing customers in offering technology solutions that will help us fulfill our vision for our library software: Patron Relationship Management.

Patron Relationship Management

We truly believe this is going to be one of the key tools libraries will need in the future to maintain great patron relationships and relevance in the community. Two comments we hear often are “I wish we could answer all patron questions this way” and “I wish everything could be in one place.” One of those comments we take as a compliment, the other we are taking seriously as a wish list item. Our goal for Text a Librarian was always to start simply, create web-based software that’s easy to use, reliable and certified by the mobile carriers, then grow additional features, elements and uses to continue giving more patrons access to libraries on their mobile phones. You can expect to see more from us in the mobile technology space, but every new product or service we add will have patron communications and relationship management in mind.

Links

Andy Woodworth: Why Closing More Public Libraries Might Be the Best Thing (…Right Now)
Aaron Tay: Why libraries should proactively scan Twitter & the web for feedback – some examples
LISWire: Mosio’s Text a Librarian in Over 500 Libraries, Announces Add-On Mobile Services

Today Mosio’s Text a Librarian goes live with OCLC’s QuestionPoint.  Libraries who are customers of both can choose to have text message questions show up and be answered in QuestionPoint.

Librarians who are staffing QuestionPoint will be able to immediately answer text questions, noticeable by a “TXT MSG” prefix and a new answering interface.

Text message questions and answers will be included in QuestionPoint’s reporting.

Of course, all of your Text a Librarian functionality still works too.  Patrons can still text for instructions, autoresponders will be sent when the library is closed, and message footers will be added to promote library events.  Messages will be threaded inside of QuestionPoint as they are in Text a Librarian, so you can easily carry out a full conversation.

TAL marketing materials are still available from your login, so be sure to promote your service!

As lead developer at Mosio, I want to send a big thank you to OCLC’s team for helping us make this happen. They were all a pleasure to work with.

If you’re interested in learning more, sign up for our weekly webinars.

Use the Buzz to Build One

Google’s new microblogging service, is getting a lot of, well, buzz. “Hello World!” has literally been replaced by “Buzz! Buzz!” by new people trying it out. If you’re not familiar with it, here’s the best way to explain it:

It’s all of the elements that one could think of getting out of Twitter (more than 140 characters, the ability to post videos and photos) packed neatly into your gmail account. While there are still some kinks to work out (you get an email every time someone you’re following posts or comments, which could get really annoying fast), Gmail’s built-in active user base of 176 million users is making it a clear force to be reckoned with.

In comparison, Twitter claims to have 75 million users and about 25% of accounts are reported to be inactive. Foursquare, known by some as “The Twitter of 2010″ is similar in that you “check in” using GPS on your phone and has been building momentum in it’s growth. David Lee King recently had a great post about it called “Foursquare and Libraries – Definitely Something There!” And I would agree, but it seems Buzz might be hot on the trail as it has the same built-in GPS/Geo-Location features and it works directly with Google Maps. Granted, it’s currently missing the fun “Mayor” game element Foursquare has, but this is a numbers game and Google definitely has numbers.

Library Marketing Tips for Using Google Buzz

If you have any other ideas or thoughts, post them in the comments.

Happy Buzzing!

Update: Someone just Buzzed me this great post from AEXT.net entitled 12 Undocumented Tricks for Google Buzz, worth a read.

A Year of Mobile Reference Simplified

The past year has been an incredible one for Text a Librarian and all of us at Mosio are excited for what’s on the horizon for the year ahead.

What a year it’s been?!

When we launched Text a Librarian at ALA Midwinter in Denver last January, we set out to provide libraries with a new, socially-relevant communication tool to reach more patrons, keep the user interface clean and easy-to-use and encourage ongoing feedback to make Text a Librarian the most useful mobile reference technology in the industry.

We continue to challenge ourselves each day to meet and exceed these goals by designing new features and functionalities (like RefStart) to increase efficiencies and improve user/patron experiences, and by showing how Text a Librarian can be used beyond questions and answers to add value to the service by presenting opportunities to utilize text messaging as a way to gather feedback, collect data, market libraries and engage patrons on a mobile technology that most of them own.

What we never expected?

Mosio was built on the notion of “helpful people helping people” via mobile questions and answers. We felt that Text a Librarian would be a welcomed service in the library industry. What we never expected was that the library community is one that encourages the open-flow sharing of information, ideas and technology that serve for the betterment of the whole. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense.

It is refreshing and inspiring to be a part of this community. It motivates us to listen, learn and want to contribute more.

What’s next? More Mobile Technologies for Libraries

It is now very clear that mobile accessibility and services are must-have components of every library to accommodate on-the-go patrons with on-the-go technologies. Text messaging use continues to explode at a massive rate, and the mobile web is also sharply on the rise. These two mobile technologies individually provide efficient access to information and resources, and when offered in combination, ensure that every patron with a mobile phone has mobile access to your library.

We are dedicated to help you reach your mobile goals in 2010 and beyond by extending all of Mosio’s mobile solutions and services to libraries.

• Mobile websites
• Mobile systems integrations
• Mobile marketing (text message announcements, notifications, alerts, newsletters)
• Mobile web development

If your library is considering ways to mobilize beyond text message reference services let us know how we can make your mobile goals a reality.

Thank YOU!

We want to send a big THANK YOU to everyone who continues to support Text a Librarian in various ways. We greatly appreciate your ideas, suggestions and feedback.

All of our best in the year ahead!

Sincerely,

The Text a Librarian Team

Questions, comments, feedback? Text us!
Text asktal + your message to 66746.

The answer is simple: it violates Google’s Terms of Service.

Google Violation, Part 1: Screen Scraping and Polling
Google Voice does not offer any sort of API (permitted) way of letting you piggy back your technology onto Google Voice, to receive text messages via your Google Voice number and then use them in other software. What that means is that anyone using Google Voice to piggy back on their text messaging function is doing so by automatically logging into the system, which is known as “screen scraping” or “polling.” Doing this is a direct violation of Google’s Terms of Service:
“5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Google. You specifically agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services through any automated means (including use of scripts or web crawlers) and shall ensure that you comply with the instructions set out in any robots.txt file present on the Services.”

Google Violation, Part 2: Reselling Google’s Services
Google as a company is a wonderful contributor to the open source movement and offer APIs to many of their products. Google Voice, however, is not one of them. Currently there is no Google Voice API and depending on who you ask, the response is either hopeful or “there’s no way that will happen.” Regardless of which side you stand on, any organization or individual selling software that includes Google Voice hacks is again doing so in violation of Google’s terms of service:
“5.5 Unless you have been specifically permitted to do so in a separate agreement with Google, you agree that you will not reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade or resell the Services for any purpose.”

It’s Unreliable
When Google releases APIs to their software and services, they are providing reliable access under an agreed upon set of circumstances (some involve commercial vs non-commercial rights, etc) and make product change decisions with APIs in mind. Simply put, when they make changes, they do so either without affecting the API or by giving those with API access appropriate information so adjustments can be made, ensuring the services will still work well. With no API, there’s no warning, no information on why code changes. If you’re accessing Google without an API and things begin not working, there is no recourse in getting things up and running again.

We hope this clears up any questions people have regarding Google Voice and why we don’t use it as an SMS gateway. We think Google Voice is pretty cool, but it’s not a legal, reliable way to offer text messaging software to libraries, companies or organizations, so we opt instead for legal, approved ways of giving our customers access to text messaging. As far as Google being a company the supports openness, we applaud them for being so, but also recognize that Google is open when it’s convenient for them. While it may not be “go to jail” illegal, it’s simply not a risk worth taking.

If you have any questions for us, please feel free to contact us.

The Mosio Team