SMS is a great way to push small amounts of text to mobile users. But what happens when your application needs to send more than 140 characters of information? Most modern phones, including Apple’s iPhone, support the ability to launch the mobile web browser using the URL embedded in the SMS message. Your application can create a short URL that points to the content you need to send and send the URL in the body of the SMS instead of the content itself. The user experience varies from phone to phone. On the iPhone, the user simply touches the link; on other phones, there is usually a menu option that will activate the url.
The URL is subject to the same size limits as any other SMS message. Keeping the URL as short as possible is key, allowing you to send descriptive text along with the message to give the user an idea as to what they will be viewing when they click the link. URL shortening services like tinyurl will keep your URL to around 25 characters. Twitter users are no doubt familiar with this idea, whether they send Tweets from their phone or not.
Follow Us
Subscribe