TXTmob is a service, similar to

electronic mailing lists A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is re ...

and predecessor to

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

, that lets users share

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...

SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...

text messages with both friends and total strangers. Users can sign up to send and receive messages to and from various groups, which are organized around a range of different topics.

How the service works

The TXTMob service will forward messages received to all members of a particular group as they are received. In an unmoderated group, any group member can send a text message to be received by all other members of that group. Groups can also be moderated, in which case the group is set up as a sort of announcement-only group, which is used primarily as a one-way conduit of information and text messages can only be sent by selected people (often just that group's particular administrator).

Private, public, and secret TXTMob groups

A public group is one which any TXTMob member may join. Membership in a private group is limited by the group's administrators. When an individual first attempts to join a private group, his or her membership will be listed as "pending." Once an administrator of the group upgrades their membership, they will be able to receive messages, and depending on if the group is moderated or not, send messages. Secret groups are similar to private groups in that membership is restricted by the group's administrators. However, membership in secret groups is by invitation only; secret groups do not appear in group directories and uninvited members are unable to sign up for "pending memberships".

Development of the service

TXTMob was first developed by the

Institute for Applied Autonomy The Institute for Applied Autonomy was an activist group of anonymous artists known for employing technology in protest. The group focused on dissemination of knowledge, autonomy, and methods of self-determination through artistic expression and ...

for protesters at the

2004 Democratic National Convention The 2004 Democratic National Convention convened from July 26 to 29, 2004 at the FleetCenter (now the TD Garden) in Boston, Massachusetts, and nominated Senator John Kerry from Massachusetts for president and Senator John Edwards from North ...

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

and the

2004 Republican National Convention The 2004 Republican National Convention took place from August 30 to September 2, 2004 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York. The convention is one of a series of historic quadrennial meetings at which the Republican candidates fo ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

(see

2004 Republican National Convention protest activity 2004 Republican National Convention protest activity includes the broad range of marches, rallies, performances, demonstrations, exhibits, and acts of civil disobedience in New York City to protest the 2004 Republican National Convention and the ...

). Tad Hirsch, a researcher in the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

's Smart Cities Group and Computing Culture Research Group, continues to offer TXTmob cleaned up, packaged and released under the

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

via

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

Legal

Tad Hirsch, creator of TXTMob, was the subject of a subpoena by the

City of New York New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

in connection with several lawsuits against the City that allege police misconduct during the

Twitter

TXTMob was one of the example services which was used as a model for the service

when it was originally created.”The other thing was @blaine and i were hacking on txtmob.org which is an open source group text messaging system. We spent a lot of time talking about txtmob, trying it, figuring out why it didn’t work." Comment from @rabble at

References

{{reflist

External links

Institute for Applied Autonomy
— developers' website
TXTMob @ Sourceforge
- code
Interview with Tad Hirsch
- Hirsch discusses subpoena Telecommunication services