Facebook Gmail Phone Filter

The other day I had an idea that I think is worth sharing. 

I post to Twitter, but most people who see those posts don't see them via Twitter, they see them when the tweets are imported to Facebook as status updates. 

When someone responds to your post on Twitter, you get an SMS with their reply.  When someone responds to my post from Facebook, which is where the vast majority of responses and reactions occur, I don't get notified on my phone, which is usually where I sent the original message from.  Often I'm nowhere near my computer, and won't be for hours.

This means that I don't see the response until I check my e-mail (or Facebook, but e-mail is usually first).  I have Facebook configured to send me a message when someone responds to my posts.  It occurred to me that I could get those same notifications on my phone.  Here's how.

I set up a filter in Gmail that forwards matching e-mails to my phone's multi-media message (MMS) e-mail address. 

Here's what the filter looks like.

Here's the first step in creating the filter.  I'm also forwarding Facebook messages to my phone.  If I were to leave off the word "your" and just say "commented on" then the filter would include comments on other people's posts that I had previously commented on.

Here's the second step.  The MMS e-mail address is the address that appears on an e-mail if I send an MMS message (e.g., a picture) from my phone to my Gmail address.

And that's it.  When someone responds to my Twitter/TwitPic posts from Facebook, I get the message on my phone right away.  Since it's an MMS and not an SMS, the messages are not limited to 160 characters.  I have a messaging plan with AT&T that doesn't distinguish between the two kinds of messages.