Got the following message from Twitter the other day:
“You have 10 incoming sms updates remaining this week. Try receiving unlimited updates at m.twitter.com. Also, thanks for using Twitter!”
Real bummer. But, from Twitter, it was coming to us all eventurally. SMSs cost money and, if you do the math, Twitter SMSs are not geared to be cheap – one message generates a ton of me$$age$. And, we all know that someone has to pay for it – either us or a sponsor.
Twitter did sneak in some tips into the SMSs a while back. Maybe they were practicing how to use their system to append messages to SMSs. Yeah, they were a bit annoying, and I wasn’t really able to see any context sensitivity (which would be ideal for providing interesting sponsored stuff). But, we all knew this had to come.
Chris O’Donnel commented on this previously (and some other folks have things to say, too).
But, now setting quotas, which I immediately used up, has been like taking my crack away. These past two days I have been franticly trying to work out my mobile methods for keeping up with my tweeps. Twitter via m.twitter.com is NOT the ideal way to follow Twitter. SMS is.
Alas, this cold-turkey method will certainly sharpen my thought processes that will lead to a decision to either accept sponsored Twits or for me to pay a monthly fee. Oh, yeah.
Do you feel the same?
As for the sponsored SMSs: I say ‘sponsored’ since I think click through ads will not really be the best way (though AdMobs might disagree). But, for Twtter, if they can get someone to pay for a chunk of impressions (a huge quota for users) then they are more likely to create ads that fit the twits. Though, if you do the math, the CPM needed might be too high.
What to do, what to do?
Hi Charlie,
try out the cellity app: http://www.cellity.com/en/download.html
Still needs a Data connection though.
One way round the quota issue is to pay for SMS updates from one of the new services that have sprung up in the last few days since most of the world lost its SMS updates (only US, Canada and India now have free SMS updates).
Services such as http://www.hootsms.com and the more limited 3jam give you a way of paying for SMS updates from Twitter.
Hi,
I thought you might be interested to know that myself (@PaulKinlan) and (@prawlings) have launched a twitter service called Twe2 (http://www.twe2.com) that gives Twitter users their DM’s, @replies and custom searches via SMS for free (to nearly every country in the world). The free part is that the messages are advertising subsidised.
Regards,
Paul