Hostbot, a Burner Line for Vacation Rental Hosts

We’ve built a free utility for short-term rental hosts renting their homes through Airbnb, HomeAway, VRBO, and other vacation rental marketplaces.

We’re calling it Hostbot, and it is a smart agent that automatically interprets and answers the “frequently asked questions” all hosts find themselves answering again and again.

Hostbot is built on the Burner API, which was also announced today.

How Hostbot Works

Simply authorize Hostbot, attach it to a Burner, and give the number to your guests.

Then when they text common questions like “What’s the wifi password?” or “Where is the closest public transit?” the answers you wrote in advance will automatically be sent back to them.

We’ve identified sixteen common questions based on our research into Airbnb hosts. And if a question comes through that’s not in your script, no worries—just respond as you normally would.

Of course, using Hostbot for Burner comes with all the benefits of Burner itself—no one bothering you on your personal mobile, the ability to save contacts and customize the appearance of your lines, reminders, and much more. So after setting it up, all you have to do is sit back, relax, and enjoy your peace, quiet, and privacy.

We hope this example shows you how Burner can help people be more productive at work. Both hosts and guests benefit from automation workflows.

We think Burner is most useful for situations where people want to partition or control their identity. At work, at school, on dates, but also when you're renting out a vacation home, online shopping or looking for a new car.

Renting out your home and connecting Hostbot to your Burner is, of course, just the beginning of what’s possible when you take Burner—the phone number that lets you take control of your identity, privacy, and productivity—and turn it into an open platform.

See all the benefits of using Hostbot and how to get started here. If you have any questions about how to use Hostbot for your particular vacation rental business, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at support@burnerapp.com.

Build Apps on Burner: New API with OAuth 2 Support

Today, we’re launching the Burner REST API with OAuth 2.0 support, an important milestone for Burner as a consumer phone number platform.

It’s now easier than ever to build on top of Burner as a developer or integrate with Burner as a partner. Do you want to create tools that empower users, protect their privacy, and make phone numbers more useful and usable? Do you want to connect your app’s functionality to a rich client that treats phone numbers like software because you know this is the future of phone communications? You’ve come to the right place.

For existing Burner customers who already love Burner Connections, the Burner API enables open and advanced third-party integrations that make Burner more useful and powerful. Applications that attach voice and messaging functions to Burner, rather than simply delivering “UI-less” texts or calls, can offer their customers more options and rich client features for handling communications.

Users, of course, have complete control to revoke access to any third-party integration from within the Burner app, and we will continue to protect users’ personal data and identity like we always do.

Introducing the New Burner API

Last July, we launched the Developer Connection that allows users to listen through incoming webhooks and communicate through Burner numbers with outgoing webhooks.

The Burner API, a series of REST-based methods (accessed securely via the OAuth 2.0 authorization framework) expands upon that functionality, allowing more fine-tuned control over Burners, Contacts and Messages.

Practically speaking, this means developers will have access to set or toggle features such as the ringer, notifications, and auto-reply messages on an authorized Burner line.

The API can also add and update Contacts, as well as manage their status (i.e. block or mute).

Text messages are also included in the API controls. Third party apps can now process incoming text messages (for instance, through a Natural Language Processing service) on a person’s behalf, take programmatic actions, and/or respond or initiate new outgoing messages.

For example, any developer can now build an app like Ghostbot, or add Burner controls to an app with access to Google Calendar so it can place user lines in Do Not Disturb mode during scheduled meetings. (You can have that idea for free – we’ve got plenty more where it came from.)

Read the full Burner API documentation online.

OAuth 2.0 and Integration

The Burner API uses OAuth 2.0 for user authentication. It’s secure for users, and any authorized apps can be managed or disabled via the Burner app.

What this means in practical terms is that developers—from solo hackers to large-scale partners—can integrate Burner directly into their applications, enabling their users to benefit from the tools Burner has built to help users protect their personal phone number, and therefore their identity.

Leveraging Burner’s app, along with all of the features, business model components, and back-office elements that come with it, will save developers time, lower barriers to adoption, and allow innovators and entrepreneurs to focus on building new apps and agents into consumer phone numbers.

Zapier

Since the Developer Connection update last year, you’ve been able to use Burner with Zapier by utilizing incoming and outgoing webhooks on the Developer Connection.

You can still do this, if you want to—but we’ve made it easier. Burner is now available as a first-class Zapier Integration enabled via OAuth. No developer experience required!

Zaps allow you to connect your Burner number to other apps like Google Calendar, contact managers, customer support tools like Desk, productivity tools like Trello, social networks, and much more. The Zapier integration literally adds thousands of potential workflows to Burner, with more apps coming online every week.

Examples of creative ways you could use this include…

Send Welcome Text to New Hubspot Contact

If you are using HubSpot as your CRM, you can use Zapier to have Burner send new contacts a customized welcome message when they are added to a list.

This could be a welcome message to a new client, for instance, “Welcome to Our Awesome Agency! It’s great to have you as a client, and we appreciate your business.”

Or it could be a welcome message to someone you met at a networking event. For instance, “Hey [name], this is Bob from Awesome Agency, and it was great to meet you at the event! Now you have my direct number, feel free to call or text me back.”

Since the message comes from your direct number, any responses they send will go straight to your phone in the Burner app.

One Click Do Not Disturb

Using the Zapier Chrome plugin, you can add one-push actions to Burner. For example, with one click you can turn off the ringer and notifications, and turn on your auto-reply with a pre-set message. With another click, you can turn the ringer and notifications back on and turn off the auto-reply. You could also set up a Zap with a custom auto-reply message.

RSVP to Wedding Zap

If you’re like many people using a website builder to create your wedding site, you probably have your RSVP page hooked into a Google Sheet. Now you can hook Google Sheets up to a Burner outgoing text message and be notified as soon as someone RSVP’s. You can even customize the message based on the fields in the Sheet.

For example, this is the guest’s name and the RSVP status:

Check out our updated Zapier page for detailed walkthrough of how to get started with Burner on Zapier.

Hostbot, a Bot-Enabled Burner Line for Vacation Rental Hosts

To further demonstrate the capabilities of our new API with OAuth, we also built a smart agent for short-term rental hosts to communicate with their guests. Once Hostbot has been authorized to a particular Burner line, the host answers sixteen common questions we’ve identified in our research of Airbnb, Homeaway, and VRBO hosts. Hostbot will then respond automatically to corresponding guest questions via text message. Learn more about Hostbot in this blog post.

In the API docs, we have more bot examples and webhook examples with which you can experiment.

We look forward to seeing what you come up with, and to hearing your questions and feedback. You can shoot us a text at (323) 391-4827 or email at developers@burnerapp.com.

Burner + Nomorobo: Empowering People to Silence Spam Calls

Our fight against needless calls and spam messaging continues. Today we’re pleased to announce an exclusive partnership with Nomorobo, winner of the FTC Robocall Challenge, to block robocalls and telemarketers for Burner customers.

Burner is the first and only virtual phone number app to integrate Nomorobo's technology. Adding Nomorobo to Burner’s arsenal of Connections also extends our mission to create the first truly open phone number platform.

Would you like “Rachel from Card Services” to stop ringing you every time you sit down to dinner? Us too!

Here’s how it works:

1. Activate Nomorobo

First, make sure you update your app to the latest version (iOS 3.5.1 or Android 3.5.4) on your device.

Also, you’ll need to have a Premium subscription. Only Premium customers will have the Nomorobo Connection.

Once the app updates, the Nomorobo Connection will be turned on by default for all Burner lines for Premium subscribers. A prompt will appear indicating the new Connection, and give you the option to turn it off.

2. Robocalls and telemarketers are filtered out automatically

Once you turn on the Nomorobo Connection, robocalls and telemarketers are pre-scanned, and filtered out automatically. Those calls won’t ring to your phone.

Nomorobo works by cross-referencing the incoming number with “a MASSIVE database of known, illegal robocallers ... compiled with the help of the FTC, user reports, and [their] own honey traps.” Honey traps, also known as honeypots, are hidden security mechanisms designed to fool robots and other spammers (see Nomorobo’s FAQ).

For you, it’s zero hassle. No extra action is required, nor is there any inconvenience for legitimate callers. Your friends and colleagues won’t even know you’ve turned it on.

3. View Filtered calls

If a call finds a match in Nomorobo’s database, it gets placed into the “Filtered” section of your call history.

If there’s no match, the call goes through.

4. Whitelist non-spam numbers

If a call was Filtered incorrectly (or you believe the system made an error), tap the call and then select “Move to Inbox” to whitelist the number.

In the future, calls made to you from this number will ring to your phone.

 

5. Turn it off at any time

You can manage the Nomorobo Connection in the “Details” section of each Burner line, so that you can activate it on a line-by-line basis.

To improve our user’s overall experience, Nomorobo will be turned on by default for all lines for Premium subscribers.

A free bonus for Premium customers

For Premium subscribers, the Nomorobo Connection will be available at no extra charge—a great benefit for great customers.

If you’re not subscribed, you can learn more about Burner Premium and upgrade to an unlimited Burner line for only $4.99/mo.

Do you have feedback or questions about Burner or the new Nomorobo Connection? Feel free to email us at support@burnerapp.com.

In the meantime, enjoy your peace of mind while calls from "Rachel from Card Services" go right where they belong!

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Ready to get started with a new disposable number that can block robocalls and telemarketers while protecting your privacy and identity? Click the button below to search for available numbers in an area code of your choice!

Working the Election? Phone Banking? Get A Free, Unlimited Burner

Today we announced that we are making Burner numbers available free of charge, on an unlimited-use basis, for all people who want them for the purposes of getting out the vote or otherwise supporting the election.

Thanks to all those working this important election season from Burner.

I'm beyond proud of how the Burner team dove into action on this, which all started literally yesterday when we read that the NYTimes was making itself free for election coverage and thought, "what a wonderful idea -- we should do something like that too".  In the course of half a day, the team spun up and shipped this, and we're all happy to share it.

I hope you will join me in sharing to social media channels, friends, and relevant influencers and politicos who might be interested.  As I am sure you know, turnout will be a key driver of the outcome of this election at the top of the ticket and down-ballot -- as will the work of those out there helping ensure fair and legal voting procedures are followed.  

No one should have to compromise their own privacy to do this kind of work, and we've actually had a number of requests for bulk numbers for electioneering.  This is now available for everyone -- and if using Burner helps a few people out there be less reluctant to participate in our great (if occasionally crazy) democracy, we will consider this a home run.

Thank you so much for your work.

Click here to get a free Burner number for Get Out The Vote & Election volunteers

Every Day Is a GIF with Burner 3.4: Now Updated for iOS10

A brand new release of Burner is hightailing it to the App Store right now. Who likes to stay up to date? We do. You do, too? Well, that’s why we get along so well.

The latest version of Burner includes some updates for iOS10, support for GIFs (I can hardly believe it!), and a few bug fixes, of course.

Sending a GIF in a message

 

 

GIFs, the gift that keeps on giving

We now support sending and receiving GIFs in messaging. Add a GIF from your favorite GIF keyboard or upload one from photos on your phone. Say it with animation!

 

 

 

 

Burner Today View widget

 

Your Burners at a glance in the Today View

Did you know you can add a Burner widget to the Today View on your iPhone? Our latest update delivers an improved preview of all your Burner numbers and their statuses. This is useful for finding your Burner numbers without opening the app or seeing how many minutes and texts you have left.

You can add or remove this widget using the circular “Edit” button from the bottom of the Today View.

Locations on the number picker

Early releases of new features

We’re also rolling out some new features that may not reach everyone right away. You might spot them early and if you have feedback or questions, drop us a line at support@burnerapp.com.

Locations added to number picker
When you choose a phone number, you will now be able to see the city and state it’s associated with. For example, I only want Manhattan phone numbers. It’s easier to get a reservation at Babbo.

New tutorials  
For our newest members of the Burner community, we’re introducing some in-app tutorials to help you get your Burner set up. We’re not yet rolling them out for everyone, but if you’re a new user, look out for the new tutorials when you set up your first Burner.

More, better things

A few other improvements we made to the Burner app include:

- Save SMS draft - When you’re writing a message and you don’t send it, it saves as a draft!
- Improved timestamping - Timestamps now show at the minute you sent or received a message.
- More stable colors - When you customize your Burner, the color sticks around even after a re-install. How grand!

Thanks for being a part of our community. Do keep us updated on how you’re using the app and what you think. See this post or hit us up on Twitter @burner.

Lifehacker: Five Useful Things You Can Do With a Burner Phone Number

Fantastic Burner rundown by Lifehacker's Patrick Allan! That and we're gonna need this graphic as an oil painting for the office!

Full story at Lifehacker.com

Burner featured in Lifehacker

“When you think of “burner” phone numbers, espionage and spies probably come to mind. But there are plenty of reasons regular folks would want a burner number, and a few apps, let you create as many as you need. Here are a few ways you can use a burner number professionally, to protect your privacy, and even kill text message spam.

Before you begin, you’ll need the right app for the job. Burner, available for iOS and Android, is the most popular, and the one we’ll reference most in this guide. ”

— http://lifehacker.com/five-useful-things-you-can-do-with-a-burner-phone-numbe-1787635006

Say Anything - We’re All Ears

The design team is kicking off an effort to spend more time listening to you, our beloved Burner community. Whether you’ve never used Burner before, you just started or you’ve been a longtime fan, we want to talk with you. Really, we’re all ears.

Here’s how the conversations work:

1. Let us know you're interested in talking with us. You can do this by filling out the following form or send an email to Lex at lex@burnerapp.com with the subject “Let’s talk Burner.”

2. We'll email you and find a 20 minute time slot that works for your schedule

3. Then, we'll talk! We'll have a few questions for you and you can share your experience using the app.

We want to make Burner better and it all starts by hearing your thoughts - the good, the bad and the annoying. It’s fast, easy and painless (we hope). I’ll even send you my favorite lemonade recipe as a bonus! Wow, what a deal! 

Thank you in advance and don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions.

Ready for Android N with Burner 3.5 (plus GIFs!)

Burner for Android has been updated to take advantage of some exciting new features of Android N: Direct Reply for notifications and split screen Multi-Window support.

Improved Messaging 

Reply from the Home Screen

As you can see in the screenshots below, you can now reply to incoming text messages without leaving the home screen. Simply slide down the notification, tap reply, type your reply, and hit send. The notification updates inline, and you can see a few message back in the conversation in the notification tray.

GIFs and Smoother Animations

If you have a Picture or Subscription Burner, you can now express that perfect emotion or reaction with those brief animations we know as GIFs. This update also makes the messaging window animations smoother and more native-feeling.  

Multi-Window Mode

Burner now also supports Android's Multi-Window mode. You can have two apps either side-by-side in landscape mode or or one above the other in portrait mode. This allows you to have Burner running in one window while viewing a web page or composing an email in another.

Say Hello to Ghostbot, a Smart Bot That Can Handle Your Unwanted Texts

Create Your First Number

Get unlimited calls, texts, and pictures on a private line!
Pick your number now.

Say hello to the latest innovation in open phone numbers.

We’re pleased to introduce Ghostbot, the witty text message autoresponder that anyone can add to Burner to handle unwanted, aggressive, or abusive texting situations.

Ghostbot is both a glimpse of the future and a small taste of what’s possible when the newly popular concept of “bots” converges with Burner phone numbers that are smart and open for anyone to build on.

Why Ghostbot?

Texting is a fun, convenient, and regular part of dating culture these days. But we’ve heard from many of our users—and we know from public conversation and the surging popularity of social media communities like @ByeFelipe—that unwanted, aggressive, and even sexually harassing texts are a real and growing problem.

So we partnered with Voxable, the bot makers, and Peter Miriani, a screenwriter, to build a smart, free utility for Burner to help keep people safe and free of unwanted advances.

No longer want to deal with someone? Aren’t sure how to exit gracefully? Don’t want to inflame the situation? Once you switch Ghostbot on, an intelligent agent will take over and handle aggressive, abusive, or otherwise don’t-want-to-deal-with-it texts for you with humor, effective disengagement tactics, and a touch of artistry.

Ghostbot is a glimpse into the future of phone numbers

In contrast to bot-of-the-day strategies that seem to be popping up everywhere, this is not just another way to order a pizza, call an uber, or "join the conversation" with your favorite millennial-targeted brand. Apps on Burner work for the user.

Ghostbot is an example of what kinds of things are in store for our users in the future. The tools we’ve built into our platform make the phone number smarter in ways that traditional carriers can’t (and won’t).

Best of all, anyone can build “bot” or agent-style applications that sit on top of Burner lines using the incoming and outgoing webhooks we built into Burner Connections.

We think Ghostbot is just a small taste of what's possible when intelligent agents are embedded into smarter communication tools. (Want to help us? We're hiring!)

Setting up Ghostbot

It’s simple.

1. Visit the Ghostbot web page and activate Ghostbot on your Burner number (or create a free new Burner number now if you don’t already have one). You’ll want to download the Burner app as well, to manage other settings on the number and to use it with the people you don’t want to ghost.

2. Select or add the contact(s) you want to ghost. 

3. Wait for a message. When Ghostbot sees incoming texts from a person who has been “ghosted,” it runs a Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine to reply. After a variable delay, it replies to the message with one of many possible scripted responses: For example, “nope,” “I just have no time right now,” “sorry, I’m just completely overwhelmed with work,” or “sorry, just me and 🍕 tonight.” This continues until the conversation peters out and the texter gets the hint.

How Ghostbot works

Ghostbot is built atop a 3rd-party platform called API.ai that has been trained to understand some intents. It also learns from experience. For instance, Ghostbot can determine when a text is a “let’s do something” invitation, a “booty call”, a pick-up line, a proclamation, or a lewd comment, among others.

Ghostbot has a personality that stands in for you. It responds at random intervals with conversational and funny language so that it doesn’t feel like talking to a robot.

Here are a few examples of conversations with Ghostbot. (Ghostbot’s replies are on the left-hand side of the threads in the screenshots below.)

Ghostbot: a collaboration between Burner, Voxable Labs, and Peter Miriani

Ghostbot was developed in a collaboration with the fine bot builders at Voxable, and screenwriter/graphic novelist Peter Miriani. We like to think of it as one part practical solution, one part technology innovation, and one part art project.

A little bit more about our partners:

Founded by partners-in-business-and-life engineer Matt Buck and product designer Lauren Golembiewski, Voxable helps companies harness the power of conversational interfaces by designing and building innovative voice and chatbot experiences for their clients. Voxable’s mission is to help humans and machines better understand one another.

Peter Miriani has written numerous screenplays and graphic novels including "NSFW" and "The Luminous Aldous Spark," both currently in production. Additionally, Peter has over ten years of experience building information categorization and organization systems for search engine marketing and advertising businesses. He holds a Master's degree at USC's School of Cinema-Television. Ghostbot is his first bot.

Try Ghostbot for free

Since Ghostbot is built on Burner, our entire user community and anyone who wishes to sign up for a free-sample Burner number, can now access and use Ghostbot for free.

Get started at ghostbot.burnerapp.com.

We’re looking forward to hearing feedback from our community about Ghostbot—and other bots built using Burner’s open webhooks.

Stay safe.

Rolling Out a Stack of New Features and Smart Phone Capabilities with Burner 3.3

We’re on a mission at Burner – to build a better, smarter phone number.  

Today we’re rolling out a stack of features and updates, including a new Google Sheets Connection for text and contact exporting, a new-and-improved Slack Connection, exciting new VoIP and tablet capabilities, and a number of other enhancements including bulk message actions and an easier way to connect Burner to IFTTT and Zapier.

New Connection: Google

We’ve been thrilled by the response to our recently launched Connections platform (original blog post).  The best part of it is seeing how people use the various connections, in particular our Developer Connection – which lets users connect Burner to any webhook-enabled web service.  A number of people wanted to pump incoming Burner texts into Google Sheets, which they enabled via Zapier (recipe), so we decided to make that integration native.  

Now you can directly authorize a connection to Google from within Burner, and all incoming texts are automatically added to a new Sheet as they come in, with all new contacts being added to a separate tab.

We’ve overhauled our Slack Connection as well, affording greater control over how teams can use Burner from within Slack.  Now you can connect a Burner to a Slack channel (where any team member in the channel can see or reply) OR connect to Slackbot, which lets you use Slack as your personal texting client with Burner numbers.  We’ve also refreshed our commands around a “/burner” syntax.

Our users have been coming up with lots of interesting uses for the Slack connection, from customer service to public Q&A’s – and we think all companies interested in talking to customers by text should give this a try.   Hit us up with questions or comments at 310.919.5060 if you want to experience it yourself.  We’ll hit you back via our Slack 2.0 connection.

Finally, we’ve made it easier to connect Burner to IFTTT and Zapier – two services that let you create hundreds of custom recipes across dozens of services.  Want to flash the lights when you get a voicemail, or text your thermostat a new temperature setting? Just navigate in the app to the Developer Connection and you’ll find new links and walk-throughs.

In-App Calling, Powered by VOIP

Perhaps the biggest feature we’re rolling out starting today is a new capability allowing users to control whether calls come in and out via their underlying carrier phone (which is how Burner has historically worked) or calls are made and received within the app itself (via VoIP).  This lets users choose the call flow they prefer and makes Burner much more useful in wifi-only situations, on tablets, across multiple devices, and even internationally.

It's something many users have asked for, and we hope will love.

Burner In-app calling (VoIP) options are available today on Android and will be rolling out on iOS over the next few weeks.

 

OTHER NEW THINGS

Number Picker:  Now you can choose from a list of possible numbers and pick one that is easy to memorize. The devil may be in the details, but so is satisfaction.  You choose a local number that suits you, and isn’t that the way things should be?

Bulk delete and mark-as-read:  Many of us use Burner to avoid large numbers of unwanted calls and texts, all of which occupied inbox real estate and generated unnecessary “red ball” notifications on the app icon.  Now you can clear these with bulk actions that let you mark-as-read or delete large batches of messages.  (From within a line or the “recent messages” context, just pull down to see these options.)

Offline support:  Burner now offers better support for reading your messages offline too.

Of course these features join many others, including text auto-replies, bot replies, custom photo backgrounds and line colors, message reminders, and so much more.

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We are building phone numbers from the future.  The future isn’t taking what you get and making do - the future is about choice, flexibility and utility.  We are relentless about bringing the future of phone numbers to our customers, and Burner connections,VOIP and the many improvement we’ve made to the latest version of Burner are collectively a big step forward. Check it out here.

Download Burner today!