Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released

[dcarr]

Consider offering email as well? With something like SendGrid, you can probably push out all the emails nearly instantly. And if you ask users to provide their carrier, you can use the email-to-SMS gateways offered by most service providers (this seems like a fairly comprehensive list, but I'm sure offering just the major US options would be fine).

I'm guessing you're using Twilio for SMS, which unfortunately does have that rate limit for non-shortcode SMS. This could serve as a fallback for users who don't provide an email and/or don't use a cell carrier with a supported email to SMS gateway.

[The other Gabe]

I'm liking the random quote generator

[forbes]

Originally Posted by JB987

The High Roller team motto is "It's not enough"...

I went ahead and added a couple more phone numbers for good measure. Now we're at ~3 minutes.

Originally Posted by dcarr

Consider offering email as well?

I considered it, but decided against implementing email notifications to keep the system simple, based on the amount of time I had to make it.
I'll probably add it as an option next year.

[Gweiss96]

Originally Posted by forbes

I went ahead and added a couple more phone numbers for good measure. Now we're at ~3 minutes.

3 minutes until what?????

[forbes]

Originally Posted by Gweiss96

3 minutes until what?????

3 minutes from the time divisions are released to the last text notification going out.

Sorry for the alarm!

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by forbes

3 minutes from the time divisions are released to the last text notification going out.

Sorry for the alarm!

That is 2.973 minutes too long.

[Abhishek R]

3310 demands .25 seconds or less

Thanks for this!

[Austindock7]

Originally Posted by The other Gabe

I'm liking the random quote generator

Yeah team 3507 really enjoyed creating some of them. I enjoy the 50% chance your pit is in Houston!

[Kyler Hagler]

Originally Posted by Abhishek R

3310 demands .25 seconds or less

Thanks for this!

I signed up pretty early... Hopefully I get my message under that time!

[forbes]

Originally Posted by Kyler Hagler

I signed up pretty early... Hopefully I get my message under that time!

I should have added some micro-transactions: "Donate $0.99 to Ubotics to put your phone number at the top of the queue"

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by forbes

I should have added some micro-transactions: "Donate $0.99 to Ubotics to put your phone number at the top of the queue"

Monetizing your poor design choices? I dunno, I think that ventures into Worse Than Failure territory...

[forbes]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Monetizing your poor design choices? I dunno, I think that ventures into Worse Than Failure territory...

Sure, it sounds bad now but next year when the design is improved the shareholders will force me add an artificial delay to encourage more donations anyway.

[nick4130]

This is Great!

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by forbes

Sure, it sounds bad now but next year when the design is improved the shareholders will force me add an artificial delay to encourage more donations anyway.

Sounds like a job for Speed Up Loops.

[forbes]

Here are some post division release stats:

912 division notifications were sent to people from 349 different teams. Teams 195, 148, and 469 had the most people notified with 15, 14, and 13 respectively. The last person to sign up (from team 74) did so 3 minutes before they received their division.

Timeline (Central time):
~12:31 First divisions released
12:33 First notifications sent
12:53 Last notifications sent

Because everyone loves graphs:


The biggest limiting factor was the rate at which divisions were added to the usfirst.org website.

There was also a small bug that delayed the last 9% of notifications by about 7 minutes. Luckily I was at my computer and was able to fix it quickly.


So, to improve for the future:

• Let people choose if they want to be notified when their team gets a division, or when any team gets a division
• Add email notifications as an option
• Increase division data acquisition speed

What else could be better?