The rapid implementation of application programming interfaces has long made it easy for engineers to work with Short Message Service texts. While these resources already offer several impressive features, technicians are working hard on new ways to work with this ubiquitous communications protocol. Online business experts have quickly found new ways to deploy each option in production environments.
Sending Out Audio Clips & Animations
Due in no small part to the rise of the podcasting scene, audio files are being exchanged more now than at any other point in the Internet’s history. Rich content text message APIs can encode waveform audio file format and MP3 resources easily. These are the two most popular styles that people are going to need to share with their consumers.
Serious podcasters who are trying to keep in touch with their listeners might use it to share other types of material that consist of higher-quality audio. Dedicated API feeds make doing so a breeze. Enterprising disc jockeys are even integrating these with their mixing boards to broadcast custom music feeds over cellular lines. Soon they might be used for new types of voice annotation.
Specialists have also developed sophisticated text message API calls that make it easy to send out animated GIFs and other picture files automatically. Organizations that have to stay in touch with many people simultaneously have typically had to transmit boilerplate-style text messages to everyone on their list. Telling the API to blast out files stored in the common graphics interchange format is a much easier way to share rich content.
Most animated GIFs that have found their way onto the clearnet consist of little more than memes or other bits of pop culture ephemera. However, the format’s design specifications are much broader, which makes it ideal for sharing everything from dynamic weather maps to product demonstration footage. Depending on the type of business using a particular API, it is possible to share long-form video content boiled down into a single animated picture file.
Broadcast-quality Content Production Features
Animated image files sent over the Multimedia Message Service could soon take off in a big way. The current push for miniature vlog posts means these may prove competitive with much more sophisticated formats. However, high-end Internet marketing firms haven’t been satisfied with just these options, which is why engineers have created even more impressive API calls. Many of these incorporate support for so-called lossless compression algorithms, which are closer to archive deflators than they are to something like conventional media files.
Lossless compression doesn’t remove any of the information a message originally stored. When someone sends a photograph taken as a JPEG file over the MMS service, they’re forced to give up some of the original definition.
Sending it over a text message API in a lossless container ensures that all of the original data gets sent over the network. Wireless carriers are currently struggling to keep up with the massive increase in bandwidth required to work with these APIs, but solutions are just around the corner. In fact, many of these are the most important advancements in themselves.
Increasing the Amount of Data Sent
Network throughput is the biggest limiting factor when making calls to a text messaging API. Wireless service providers will usually only allow so much information to go through at any given time, and they might start to rate limit customers who are broadcasting more data than they deem prudent. This is more of an issue for those using APIs to work with rich content on the MMS side of the equation.
As telephone companies continue to roll 5G coverage out, they’re also making it easier to avoid hitting these data caps. It’s doubtful that there will ever be a day when people don’t have to deal with at least some sort of limitation, but they’re getting increasingly generous all the time.
Much of what can be done with text messaging APIs is limited by the capabilities of mobile carriers. With so much work being done to improve network infrastructure, it won’t be long before even end-users are able to take advantage of these new API calls.