"At Me" App: get your Twitter @ replies via SMS

August 7, 2008 / Filed under: Twitter, Development, Applications, SMS

If you're like me, SMS is your main gateway for interacting with others while mobile. Did you know you can also interact with web applications using SMS?

It's not as pretty, but if you're just after information, who needs a nicely designed web page or application? Sometimes just the content is important.

SMS is great because it has very little overhead - it's just text. It's also easy to develop applications for, since SMS is a universal language amongst mobile devices. Whereas normal web development has to be fine-tuned for a specific browser and device, SMS does not. When developing SMS applications, all you need to be concerned with is the 160 character limit.

I've created an app that works solely over SMS.

I'm calling it "At Me" App. With it, you can retrieve your most recent Twitter public @ replies via SMS. No web browser or fancy iPhone app required.

Just text atme [username] to 41411 where [username] is your Twitter username (or anyone else's for that matter). You'll then receive a return text message with the most recent public @ replies directed towards that user.

Here is a preview of how the message looks:


1) buffalojoe: I knew you were heading there ...
2) sarcastic: Of course that was my ...
3) bettyjames: lol, I saw the same idea after ...
N) Next
R) Refresh

This is just an example, of course, but you can see how it works. Your top three @ replies are visible. To view the full tweet, just send back the number next to the preview. Or, you can send back "R" to refresh the list, or "N" to view the next three @ replies. You can view up to 15 of your most recent @ replies.

Please give it a shot and see if you like it. I will be constantly adding new features.

For more information, and to report bugs and suggestions, please join the official "At Me" App Google Group.

Comments/Mentions

# Dana at 8/8/2008 5:00 am cst

I love this! I've wanted something like this for a long time without having to get device updates on everybody - wayyyy too much firehose sms tweeing :)

Thank you!

# ChaCha Fance at 4/26/2009 1:12 am cst

As of today I tried this but it did not work for me. Maybe it no longer works? If so that sucks. I use mainly SMS too. Cannot afford a fancy iPhone or anything else.