A World without Twitter SMS
Today the inevitable happened. Twitter decided to stop sending out free SMS to users across Europe.
I’ve included the full email they sent to us (via the excellent Campaign Monitor I noted) at the end of this post (for those of you in Canada, the US and India who won’t have seen it).
If Twitter can’t work out a way to make money from their service then it was inevitable that the SMS service would go, a service that costs a company $1,000 per user per year is not going to fly. SMS in the UK is ridiculously expensive anyway and I for one will be able to live without it since my Twitter usage has evolved beyond the need for the SMS updates from it.
I’d imagine a lot of part time twitter users will leave the service, lots of people may try the alternatives such as Plurk and Identi.ca, but I don’t think this will be the end of Twitter as for many users it’s not just about the SMS usage. I’d have left before for a usable service with the people I follow on it.
I do feel a bit of an idiot – I was preaching the benefits of Twitter to two of my friends last night and a major one of those is now no longer available, my Using Twitter for Business blog post is now only useful for the US, Canada and India and I am sure there will be a big uproar from many users.
Hi,
I'm sending you this note because you registered a mobile device
to work with Twitter over our UK number. I wanted to let you
know that we are making some changes to the way SMS works on
Twitter. There is some good news and some bad news.
I'll start with the bad news. Beginning today, Twitter is no
longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number. If you enjoy
receiving updates from Twitter via +44 762 480 1423, we are
recommending that you explore some suggested alternatives.
Note: You will still be able to UPDATE over our UK number.
Before I go into more detail, here's a bit of good news: Twitter
will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries
throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months. These new
numbers will make Twittering more accessible for you if you've
been using SMS to send long-distance updates from outside the UK.
Why are we making these changes?
Mobile operators in most of the world charge users to send
updates. When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to
ten followers, you aren't charged ten times--that's because we've
been footing the bill. When we launched our free SMS service to
the world, we set the clock ticking. As the service grew in
popularity, so too would the price.
Our challenge during this window of time was to establish
relationships with mobile operators around the world such that
our SMS services could become sustainable from a cost perspective.
We achieved this goal in Canada, India, and the United States.
We can provide full incoming and outgoing SMS service without
passing along operator fees in these countries.
We took a risk hoping to bring more nations onboard and more
mobile operators around to our way of thinking but we've arrived
at a point where the responsible thing to do is slow our costs
and take a different approach. Since you probably don't live in
Canada, India, or the US, we recommend receiving your Twitter
updates via one of the following methods.
m.twitter.com works on browser-enabled phones
m.slandr.net works on browser-enabled phones
TwitterMail.com works on email-enabled phones
Cellity [http://bit.ly/12bw4R] works on java-enabled phones
TwitterBerry [http://bit.ly/MFAfJ] works on BlackBerry phones
Twitterific [http://bit.ly/1WxjwQ] works on iPhones
Twitter SMS by The Numbers
It pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid
placing undue burden on our company and our service. Even with a
limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter
about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada,
India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair
billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass
these high fees on to our users.
Twitter will continue to negotiate with mobile operators in
Europe, Asia, China, and The Americas to forge relationships
that benefit all our users. Our goal is to provide full, two-way
service with Twitter via SMS to every nation in a way that is
sustainable from a cost perspective. Talks with mobile companies
around the world continue. In the meantime, more local numbers
for updating via SMS are on the way. We'll keep you posted.
Thank you for your attention,
Biz Stone, Co-founder
Twitter, Inc.
http://twitter.com/biz
If you don't want to receive news from Twitter click here:
http://twitter.cmail4.com/u/486439/6d3kjy6/
9 Comments
Twitter stops updates via UK number | digitaltoast / 14 Aug 2008 / 9:47 am
Robin / 14 Aug 2008 / 3:19 pm
TweetSMS / 14 Aug 2008 / 3:19 pm
barking » Blog Archive » Twitter Direct Messages via SMS / 18 Aug 2008 / 4:12 pm
Tworzenie Stron Tanio / 21 Aug 2008 / 10:24 am
Dave / 25 Aug 2008 / 5:28 pm
vishnu m / 02 Oct 2008 / 9:48 am
Rob Davy / 25 Nov 2008 / 5:13 pm
Paul Kinlan / 10 Feb 2009 / 10:08 pm