I'm using Twilio to send SMS messages, and I'd like to include the registration symbol ® in my message. Does anyone know what magic invocation one needs to send it?
Note: Twilio now supports Unicode. Per their documentation, "By default, SMS messages sent with Twilio support Unicode via UCS-2 character encoding to accurately represent global languages as they’re sent between different geographic locations and across carriers."
The registered trademark symbol ® has no equivalent ASCII representation and according to this answer and more recently this one, Twilio doesn't yet support Unicode.
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Checking out the relevant guide page, I see that "Two-Way SMS" is marked "No".
What exactly does this mean? Does it mean that SMS numbers are not available in China? Does is mean that a U.S. Twilio number can't receive an SMS from China? Does it mean that the Sender ID will be modified when I send from my U.S. number to China?
Twilio employee here.
You're right that we don't support two-way SMS in China currently, but you can use Twilio to purchase a Chinese phone number and use it to send SMS messages to Chinese mobile users.
Since our Chinese numbers are currently one way, the recipients of your messages will not be able to reply to them. So if you need to get some information back from your users, you might want to include a link in your message.
Note that our Chinese numbers are currently an "alpha" feature, so you will need to contact support to purchase one.
I use twilio to send sms messages but in the message I am trying to create it is a very long url and therefore won't send in 160 characters so twilio cuts the message off and url doesn't work.
If I use the automated twilio Shorten SMS the same thing happens.
I assume there is a limit to the amount of characters Twilio will send and I believe it cannot join concatenated messages in Australia from Twilio.
Edit: as of August 2019 Twilio has discontinued its URL shortening service. You should consider using a 3rd party service that allows you to set a unique base URL.
Sharing a static base-URL for a link shortener can cause unexpected carrier filtering issues with U.S. 10-digit long codes (short codes are not carrier filtered). Carriers sometimes spam filter messages by content, and the base-URLs of the links being shared appear to be one way that they categorize spam.
Twilio is working on a next-generation URL shortener that provides randomized base URLs as an add-on to a messaging service. If you are interested in this functionality contact Twilio support.
You should check to see that URL shortening is explicitly enabled in your account before attempting to send messages.
https://www.twilio.com/console/sms/settings
I am trying to send a rich text message via Twilio. I am able to send regular SMS messages, but I want to include a hyperlink in the body of the text.
I tried the twilio mediaUrl to include an rtf file, but that didn't work. Including html in the body of a message doesn't work as it just sends in plain text.
I'm posting via curl to the twilio endpoints, so i'd prefer not to have to get into PHP or some other language to achieve this. I just want to send raw data to twilio and receive a rich text message back, if it's possible.
Twilio developer evangelist here.
Using Twilio you can send MMS messages to numbers in the US and Canada. When you pass a mediaUrl the file needs to be hosted somewhere publicly on the web and it will then be included within the message.
You can pass files of any of the mime types listed here, though when sending RTF the result will depend on how well the receiving device supports RTF files.
If you want to include a link, I'd recommend shortening the URL (using bit.ly or similar) and just sending it as part of the text. Most smart phones will auto link the URL. Built in SMS apps on phones don't support markup of any sort, which is why your attempt with HTML just showed the raw markup.
Let me know if this helps at all.
When I send a test sms from https://www.twilio.com/user/account/developer-tools/api-explorer/message-create with a predefined friendly name, it doesnt apear on my phone. I only see the number.
-if this isnt possible, do you know other providers with this function that work?
[UPDATE]: Twilio now supports this feature.
You can now send messages from an alphanumeric sender ID using Twilio. I wrote up a blog post on how you can achieve this in Ruby and you can check out this article on how to get started with an alphanumeric sender ID on Twilio for more of an overview. Then check out the documentation on how to send an SMS message from an alphanumeric ID.
[UPDATE] Previous answer is below.
Twilio developer evangelist here.
You're absolutely right, the friendly name defined in your account is actually for your uses only and is not intended to appear in place of the number when sending an SMS. We have a few reasons for this, which might be interesting to you depending on your use case.
I don't have a particular company that I can recommend that does allow you to do this. A Google search might help though.
I've seen other companies do this, but Google is a notable example.
When you turn on two-factor authentication with Google, one of the options is to receive an SMS when you logon. I've noticed that the sender's address, rather than being an MSISDN like 346-555-1234 is "Google".
How are they doing that?
In the smpp 3.4 specifications, the source address can be defined as an alphanumeric string of 11 characters