Over the past few years, Studio residents have used cloud communications service Twilio in a number of projects, from haunted zoetropes to mass musical phone calls. On Friday 12 April we were joined in the Studio by James Parton, director of Twilio Europe to tell us more about the service, and introduce us to some of his favourite creative projects developed using Twilio.

Twilio is a cloud communication company opened in San Francisco, California in 2008. Twilio allows software developers to programmatically make and receive phone calls and send and receive text messages using its web service APIs. It enables phones, VoIP, and messaging to be embedded into web, desktop, and mobile software easily. James introduced us to some of the more creative applications that Twilio has been used:   
 
Christmas Magic on Rivington Street

The first example was a type of interactive marketing designed by London based creative firm Poke, who brought some Christmas magic to Rivington Street, Hackney. It invited passer-by’s to dial a Twilio phone number on a poster, which trigged a snow machine up on the roof of a building to cover the street in snow, while playing an MP3 of Let it Snow down the phone. The team at Poke used a combination of Django, Twilio API, Foursquare API, Arduino, and an EE 4G connection to power their project. You can watch a video of it in action here.

Young Guns Voicemail Project

The next project was for a US campaign for UK band Young Guns. They wanted to get some fan base engagement in the US. They created a voicemail service, which they encouraged their fans to call into and leave them a message. The number was powered by Twilio, transcribed and then uploaded to SoundCloud and embedded in the Young Guns website via a custom SC player. The band then chose certain people to give out prizes too to help encourage the engagement further. You can see the website here.

#WakeUpMeowMeow

#WakeUpMeowMeow was an interactive video installation on the side of the Southbank Centre in December 2012 to promote Meow Meow's Little Match Girl show at the Royal Festival Hall. By texting your name to a Twilio number on the video installation, you triggered a video of Meow Meow waking up to show you a personalised Christmas message. You can watch the video here.

Twilio Fund 2013

James then spoke about Twilio Fund 2013. The fund is for European companies using Twilio's cloud communication APIs that are under five years old with existing funding of less than $1 million. You can find out more and apply online, until 1 May here.

You can follow James on twitter, check out the latest developments on the Twilio blog or visit their website to find out more about Twilio.