> Twilio (and basically majority of other virtual number providers, except of very tiny few located in Europe) do not provide regular cell-type text messaging capabilities, but rather something PBX pros call “short codes”.
Twilio provides both regular phone numbers with SMS and MMS capability and short codes, the latter primarily for high-volume outbound messaging.
"Twilio provides both regular phone numbers with SMS and MMS capability and short codes, the latter primarily for high-volume outbound messaging."
Your parent is correct - you've missed each others' points.
Twilio sourced numbers cannot receive SMS from other shortcodes. No exceptions. They are not "mobile" numbers.
So yes, your twilio sourced number can send and receive SMS and you can even rent a shortcode from twilio and send/receive with that. What you cannot do is get a "normal" twilio number and receive shortcode messages.
For that reason, providing a twilio number to a provider like twitter or facebook will not work - they all typically send their auth messages via shortcode.
Those won’t work either with most big services asking for verification. There’s subreddits dedicated to getting non VOIP phone numbers (which Twilio isn’t) for verification.
Twilio provides both regular phone numbers with SMS and MMS capability and short codes, the latter primarily for high-volume outbound messaging.