1. Technical Field
The embodiments described herein are related to electronic communications and more specifically to managing multiple identities for use in electronic communication, such as text based communication.
2. Related Art
Text messaging, or texting, generally refers to the act of sending brief, electronic messages between two or more devices (e.g., portable devices such as mobile phones) over a telephone network. Although the term initially referred to messages sent using Short Message Service (SMS), it has grown to encompass Multimedia Message Service (MMS) messages that contain a wide ranging variety of content including images, videos, and sound. In many situations, sending a text message can be far more convenient and discreet than placing a phone call. Indeed, texting has steadily supplanted voice calls as a choice means of communication. By 2007, monthly texting activities have already outpaced phone calls, and as of 2012, some 80 percent of mobile phone users report using their devices for texting. In fact, texting is no longer relegated to just casual or informal exchanges, and have become prevalent even in business and professional contexts. But despite texting messaging's skyrocketing popularity, conventional SMS systems still struggle with a number of significant limitations.
First, each mobile phone is typically assigned a unique phone number (e.g., a ten digit numeric string in the United States). With a conventional SMS message, the identities of both the sender and the recipient are generally tied to the phone number associated their respective mobile phones. Neither party in the exchange has control or flexibility over their respective identities. As one example, imagine that one user, Alice, is sending a text message to another user, Bob. On the one hand, the sending device relies on the phone number of the receiving device in order to dispatch the text message to the correct destination. Thus, in this example, Alice would need to have Bob's phone number in order to send the text message to Bob's mobile phone. Meanwhile, a receiving device will almost always be able to attribute an incoming text message to the phone number associated with the sending device. So when Alice's text message is delivered, Bob's mobile phone can recognize and inform Bob that the text message had originated from Alice's mobile phone. To maintain more than one identity (e.g., work, personal), a user must have separate devices and a different phone number for each, since a single phone number cannot ported back-and-forth or otherwise shared between multiple active devices. In practice, most people resort to carrying one device for work and another device for personal communications. So depending on whether Alice wishes to text her colleague Bob or her friend Charlie, Alice will need to switch between a work phone (and number) and a personal phone (and number).
Furthermore, many social and commercial situations warrant a disclosure or exchange of contact information although some or all of the parties involved only expect or desire to stay in touch in the short-term. Phone numbers, even temporary or disposable ones (e.g., burner phones), should not be divulged indiscriminately in these situations since they are generally inconvenient and costly to set up and change. As one example, suppose Alice is holding a garage sale. Alice would like perspective shoppers to be able to contact her but only for the duration of the sale. Nevertheless, it would be impractical for Alice to set up a temporary phone number just for the garage sale but she is also loath to publicize her personal phone number when advertising her garage sale.
Conventional SMS systems also do not adequately support conversations conducted between large groups of individuals. To the extent that a SMS message can be addressed to multiple recipients, group conversations conducted via SMS tend take place only between existing acquaintances (e.g., friends, family, and colleagues). This is because the sender of a SMS message must be privy to the phone number of every participant in a group conversation, whether the SMS message is being sent directly from one mobile phone to another or through a SMS gateway (e.g., SMS messages sent and received as emails at a computer terminal). Consider, for instance, a large gathering such as a sporting event or a concert. Although many people would welcome the prospect of engaging in a group conversation with others attendees (e.g., to share personal thoughts and commentaries), it remains largely undesirable and impractical to have to share private phone numbers with numerous strangers.