Many times you want to talk to someone on Twitter but you don’t have his/her phone number. Pockets comes in handy at that time which lets you leave a private voicemail to anyone on Twitter.![pockets-logo[1]](http://lh6.ggpht.com/_4qUhcu23NoM/SqcL54sDsqI/AAAAAAAAMwk/-wpDL0f2IY8/pockets-logo%5B1%5D%5B11%5D.png?imgmax=800 "pockets-logo[1]")
Using pockets is really very easy. For example if you want to leave me a voicemail, follow the steps as mentioned below:
- Visit http://www.Pocketsapp.com.
- Enter recipients twitter name, e.g. mine is “@technomania”.
- Hit ‘Send Voicemail’.
- Pocketsapp will ask for permission to access your Twitter account using Twitter OAuth.
- Once allowed, Pocketsapp will ask you to enter your phone number.
- As soon as you enter your phone number, Pocketsapp will call you so that you can leave a voicemail to the recipient you entered in step 2.
- That’s it. Pocketsapp will leave a @reply to the recipient which he/she can access by Twitter OAuth access to pocketsapp.
To see it live, check out the embedded screencast video below: (URL)
As you would be guessing, this service could be used to spam Twitter users. But as long as people maintain sanity, Pocketsapp is a service you MUST use when you need to get in touch with someone you know on Twitter but don’t have his/her contact info.
Some Suggestions for the Pocketsapp team:
- One thing which Pocketsapp can do to improve the user authenticity and to reduce spam is by verifying the phone number added to the service.
- Replace the ‘Sign in’ button on top with ‘Sign in with Twitter’.
- Check if both have a mutual relationship on twitter. (May be that was left intentionally. But it may reduce spam. What if someone I have blocked tries to leave me a voicemail. What if a advertiser starts sending voicemail to everyone on his list whether or not they follow him back.)
- Let the user enter more than one phone number or at least a temporary accessible number.
Homework for you
Let us know in comments how did you like the service and if you happen to use it, how and why did you use it for? Why don’t you start by leaving me @technomania a voicemail on Twitter?
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Pocketsapp is an interesting concept but I don't get the utility unless it is try and contact people you really don't know. Thus, it has a greater utility for spam than actually for people that know each other. For instance, let's say I know Sara Jones from high school but lost track of her. Now I see her on twitter (note: I regularly get messages on facebook from people I have not seen in decades). If Sara is a friend, I can first follow her on twitter and see if she follows me back. If she does, then we send private messages to one another and get the telephone number. Maybe Sara does not want to talk to me. This longer process makes it easier for Sara to keep me at a distance than being greeted with a voicemail.
Should this catch on, I personally am not looking forward to having a flood of voicemail messages from SEOs who want to optimize my commercial website. Here is another issue, if I give pocketapps access to my twitter acct once, does that mean they can send me a voicemail from anyone in the universe who sends one in the future? Don't like the sound of this service.
Very well said. But if you genuinely want to talk to someone on Twitter but don't have his contact details, Pocketsapp is really helpful.
For example, I follow lot of popular bloggers in my niche but they all don't always follow me back. Now if I want to really get in touch with them, I can use Pocketsapp. This is because I can't send a direct message to them as they don't follow me. And the message is something which I can't send in public @reply sort of.
But yes, there is a very high possibility of people abusing the service and not useing it for the intended purpose. For that Pocketsapp will have to incorporate some kind of anti-spam mechanism to reduce SPAM and misuse of its service.
Let me know your views.
Thanks
How many fruitloops are going to abuse oops I mean use this?
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Hi that is a great news for all people like me….I don't know a lot about wave and thus that is very new for me…but that is a very very good news for me because collaboratively I can use their service along with twitter and many other features at a time that is nice…thanks Google and thanks web master of this site..
This seems like a nice idea but don't think this is something I'd be using. I personally hate getting phone or texts ads. Advertising is everwhere and thats cool but I like to keep my phone private.
Also can't see much utility for this, I don't see myself using this service. have you imagined how many anoying messages you get on Facebook?
Also can't see much utility for this, I don't see myself using this service. have you imagined how many anoying messages you get on Facebook?