Messaging on the TextMarks platform operates around the concept of keywords. You'll want to register a keyword for your use by creating a TextMark. Register a new TextMark (click on this link, or the link in the site's footer). It doesn't matter how you configure it just yet, and you can change it later. For now, just register your keyword.

To keep everybody happy and prevent abuse, you can only send texts to subscribers of your TextMark. There are a number of ways for people to subscribe, including:

• If you made your TextMark Auto-Subscribable, users can text your keyword to 41411.
• If your TextMark isn't Auto-Subscribable but is still Subscribable, users can text your keyword to 41411 and then reply "Y" when prompted to subscribe.
• Users can text SUBSCRIBE YOURKEYWORD or SUB YOURKEYWORD or JOIN YOURKEYWORD to 41411.
• Users can subscribe from your TextMark's public page (e.g. http://www.textmarks.com/YOURKEYWORD).
• Users can subscribe from your own site via one of our customizable Flash widgets.
• From your website, app, or Flash widget using the Anybody.invite_to_group() API call.

You can view and manage your subscribers via your TextMarks' management control panel. Just click on the "Manage" tab in the nav bar above.

To send text message alerts using the TextMarks platform, you'll need to first register for an API key. This allows you to authenticate to the TextMarks API servers.

To send alerts manually (without using the API), you can use the "Send Alert" module in your TextMark's managemenct control panel. This will allow you to experiment without code-level integration and before you receive your API key. Subscribe to your own TextMark and feel free to experiment with alert texts.

To send alerts using the API, you'll need to make an HTTP Post to our alert API endpoint with your authentication information, TextMark keyword, and alert message.

Normally alerts are sent to all subscribers, but you may optionally restrict an alert to any subset of your subscribers -- including sending to even a single user.

Please review our API Documentation for details on how to initiate these calls.

An advanced feature of the TextMarks alert system is the ability to not only provide information to users, but to ask a question and allow an easy text message response that is delivered back to your application.

Any time a user receives an alert from you, your keyword takes over that user's context. Until another keyword knocks yours out of context, short contextual responses from that user will be delivered to your keyword. (Short contextual responses are defined as single numerals 0-9, single characters A-T (upper or lower case), and double characters containing any of A-Z (upper or lower) and 0-9. Some examples: 1, 4, CA, SF, B, F.)

An example of how this feature might be used for a dating site would be to send an alert to all users when a new user registered who met their match criteria. The alert might say:

New member: "JenLuv717"
24yrs, in Palo Alto, likes tennis, movies.
Rply 1 for intro, 2 to hotlist.

For information on how to process these responses, please review the section Receiving Text Messages.

SMS is by definition a constraining communication medium. An entire SMS message may be no longer than 160 characters (including spaces, line breaks, etc.). With relevant headers/footers, the amount of room to convey a message is very short. Therefore composing meaningful SMS messages is somewhat of an art. You may wish to use common abbreviations such as: "Rply" for "Reply", "4" for "for", "2" for "to", etc. While these may seem colloquial and informal, you will find that users are typically accustomed to this text when dealing with SMS.

With an automated alert system, it is easy to broadcast alerts for every minor change or issue you think users might be interested in. But consider that the strength of SMS alerts can also be its weakness: An SMS alert will interrupt whatever a person is doing. If the information conveyed is valuable to them, they will appreciate the urgency and immediacy. If you pester users with frequent barely-relevant alerts, they are likely to complain or even unsubscribe entirely. Consider giving users the option of what specific alerts they wish to subscribe to (and implementing such with either multiple TextMarks or micro-alerts delivered to subsets of your subsribers).

You may broadcast alerts (with ads) and send messages for free. Upgrade to Pro Service to broadcast high volume ad-free alerts. Users may or may not be charged to receive text messages depending on their mobile plans.