Facebook India gets a Mobile Number
Facebook, now lets you update your status, poke your friends, message them, search for friends right from your mobile phone as a text message for free! The service was first limited to Tata Indicom and they were asked to send messages to a service number (51555). This has been made available for other networks with partnership with SMSGupShup, India’s largest Social Messaging platform. The coolest part is that you don’t have to pay for this, as the number to which you’ll send is a 10-digit mobile number rather than a service number (similar to Google India’s SMS Service). If your network still charges for National SMSes, you’ll obviously have to pay their nominal SMS fee (Rs.1–2 per message). The number to which you’ll these short codes is 92FACEBOOK (9232232665) – easy to remember, isn’t it?
Before you can start using this service, you’ll have to enable it first by logging on to Facebook and clicking the ‘Settings’ link on the top right corner and then clicking the ‘mobile’ tab. Or you can land on this site. Click ‘Activate Facebook Mobile Texts’. Choose India and select ‘Other mobile carriers’. Click Next.
When you click ‘Next’, you’ll prompted to send an SMS to 92FACEBOOK. Take your mobile, type ‘f’ and shoot an SMS to 92FACEBOOK. A validation code will be sent to your mobile. Type the same by clicking ‘Next’. If the code you entered was successful, Facebook should prompt that the process was successful and you should also get an SMS on your mobile phone.
You are all done! You can now change your notification settings in the mobile settings page. You can directly send status updates, poke, wall post and write a note. The commands are listed below.
Commands
| Update status | is at john’s party |
| Message | msg john smith what’s up? |
| Get profile info | search john smith |
| Wall post | wall john smith happy bday |
| Poke | poke john smith |
| Add a friend | add john smith |
| Write a note | note this is a mobile note |
Check out https://register.facebook.com/mobile/?texts for help on commands.
If you are a facebook-er too, you can add me up at facebook.com/JosephChristopher.
nice!!