Problem: People without computers cannot participate in Wiserearth. We need a way to provide access to the 3 billion people with mobile phones. Two demographics would benefit - developed world youth, and the Global South.

Solution: Start by offering a twitter-like functionality hooked into Group forum topics. Specifically, allow mobile users to register with their phones as WE users and post their own comments to and recieve posts from others made to specific forum topics. Build from there to offer other WiserEarth services.

Proposed approach:

Use Clickatell service and their HTTP api to take incoming SMS messages

- Incoming mobile number(s) can be rented for Euro 100 set-up fee and Euro 25 / month in each country WE chooses. Incoming costs 2 cents per message, outgoing 6 cents.

Post SMS message into WE Forum based on incoming mobile phone number (identified with a user)

- Forums can be enabled by Group Admin as accepting SMS text as input

- Forums then have aditional features enables (eg 140 character counts)

- Routing of SMS text based on user affiliation with forum

- If a user is a contributor to more than one forum then s/he will have to add unique Forum number (alphanumeric) to start of SMS to ensure proper routing

Web posted messages into forum routed back to mobile users via SMS

Possible Mobile Commands

!Join [Username] - grants a user account based on Mobile Number and supplied username

!Name [Real Name] - allows users to supply real name to profile

!ForumStart [XXXX] - allows users to follow a forum topic assuming that the ForumTopic is in an Open group or the user has been invited to the group

!ForumStop [XXXX] - allows users to stop following a forum topic

!Post [XXXX] - allows users to post to a given forum topic, if user is only active on one forum then they can simply send message to incoming phone number and it will be posted in the correct forum.

!Stop - allows users to stop recieving SMS from WE

!Start - allows users to restart recieving SMS from WE

Probably lots more ideas......

Implementing a feature like that would not be that hard. The most difficult part would be figuring out how to pay for it. Presume there would be a fee charged to the group (Wiser+) with a certain number of postings allowed per year before a subsequent charge would be made to the group.

Just heard of twitter clone with sms integration that is open source and based on PHP - laconi.ca - thanks for the tip Eugene

Posted by angusparker

Cross posted: WiserEarth Suggestions and WiserEarth Mobile