Trombone is a group texting platform that fosters effective communication. This platform enables large groups of people to easily communicate with each other in an efficient and cost-effective way using standard text messages.
Whether you are a group of students, a non-governmental organization (NGO), a company, a multinational, or a religious organization, you can reach out to your members or clients with the Trombone platform using only your mobile phone.
Trombone works on the principle of grouping. On the platform, groups are created by a primary user and organized into channels. These groups consist of members selected by the primary user who then advises these members to subscribe to the channel so they can begin communicating with ease. If any of the members of the group sends an SMS through the channel, everyone subscribed to that channel receives the text message. In other words, Trombone can be likened to the SMS equivalent of an email discussion group.
For example, if the headquarters of an NGO with subsidiaries nationwide wishes to broadcast important information to its staff, all it has to do is create a channel (group) on Trombone and have all staff members subscribe to it. Whenever a message is being sent from the headquarters, all subscribed staff members will receive the information via SMS.
Creating a channel
To create a channel, send create #channelname (where channelname is the name of the channel to be created) to +447797880420, that is, to create a channel named mychannel, for example, simply text create #mychannel to +447797880420. If a group with the same channel name exists, the creator will be sent a text message informing him of the duplicate name.
By default, all new channels will be set to open access (meaning anyone can subscribe) and will be in conversations mode (any subscriber of a channel can send messages to all its scubscribers).
How to subscribe to a channel
A created channel is of little use unless there are other people subscribed to the channel. Interested subscribers can do so by sending subscribe #channelname to +447797880420, that is, to subscribe to the channel named mychannel, for instance, simply text subscribe #mychannel to +447797880420.
Sending messages
To send a message to a channel, send #channelname your_message to +447797880420. For instance, if a class representative wants to inform the whole class that assignments for a particular course are due tomorrow, he can send #mth101 assignments are to be submitted tomorrow!!! to +447797880420 to spread the news (this is assuming that #mth101 is the channel that was created for the class).
The best thing about the Trombone Platform is that it works with any mobile phone that allows text messaging (SMS).
[Image via Flickr/ Abby Juarez]
