Twitter and SMS – Friends or Foes?
In India, SMS tops Twitter anyday. In the West, the perspective is different. Why use messaging when it’s cheaper to Twitter. Way2SMS.com claims over 5 million user registrations. How many Indians on Twitter?
In Twitter history, they had initially flirted with the idea of integrating SMS (Short Message Service) and Twitter. Since brevity is the key to both. (160 and 140 characters each). However, Twitter and SMS soon broke apart. Obviously, consider a person with 100 followers each of whom update once. That’s 100 SMSes Twitter sends. By even the cheapest Indian SMS pack, (10p), that’s Rs.10 a day to one person. And that’s underplaying a lot of factors like the fact that it’s international.
Since the success of the iPhone and the multitude of apps released to phones to access Twitter, the old SMS is dying out.
Twitter, however still allows you to update your profile via SMS. They have, with deep understanding given up trying to send you updates (except in the USA, UK, Canada and New Zealand). The India shortcode for SMS updates was launched in January last year. By August, Twitter had closed down SMS operations in most nations.
Now, a report by TechCrunch talks about how Twitter might just be getting SMS right back on track. Kevin Thau, Twitter’s head of mobile products and partnerships joined in January this year and is apparently focused on renewing the SMS service.
Now, their article terms sms a “colossal rip-off” but understands that most nations don’t have affordable iPhones or widespread wireless networks. They suggest methods to handle and improve sms alerts via Twitter.
In India however, we can only receive notifications. To activate it, you need to log on to twitter.com, go to Settings –> Devices and register the phone.
To verify your phone, follow these steps:
- Log in to Twitter
- In the upper right hand navigation bar, click Settings
- Click the third settings tab, Devices
- Add your phone number number, with country code first (+91 is the India code)
- Wait for the verification code to pop up
- Text the verification code to Twitter using the number given in the devices page
India does not have a short code anymore and we have to text it to the international number.
I tried the above with great gusto and was surprised to read this.
Note: We currently don’t support sending SMS notifications to this number. You may still verify your phone and update Twitter, but we won’t deliver to your phone.I was still under the assumption that India had SMS service. (I did not read the panel on the side – check below)
I did try SMSing the verification code, but am yet to get a reply.
This is Twitter’s fun perspective on using Twitter via SMS
Sending tweets while you’re away from your computer makes things much more interesting.
It’s all done through text messages (aka “SMS”), which you probably use all the time anyway, so there’s not much to learn.
Twitter doesn’t charge anything for this, but standard text messaging rates or bundles may apply from your carrier.
If you use your mobile in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or New Zealand you can also receive tweets via SMS. You can text “OFF” to stop receiving and “ON” to start again.
Apparently, now, on the profile for any Twitter user you follow, you will notice a little mobile phone icon surrounded by a circle. If the circle is clear, SMS updates for that user is off. If there is a green background, SMS updates are on. You can also hover over the icon to see if they are on or off. Clicking on the icon will turn them on or off. On your Following page, you will also see this same icon under the “Settings” column that you can toggle on and off.
Unfortunately, this also does not seem to work.
Does Twitter function differently for India? Is there anyone who has tried Twitter via SMS. Does it still have the same feel? Tell us.
The question to be asked is that though SMS is a useful feature to Twitter (or Tweet?) with, unless the companies in India actually allow Twitter to send messages for free, it could turn into a nightmare. Alternatively, they could work with the sms companies here (Way2SMS, 160by2 etc.) and come up with a way to resolve it.
Is it worth it? For Indians, to an extent, since not all people have access to Twitter and Internet on the go. And SMS has way higher outreach than Twitter does. For Twitter? Depends on what they define as “worth”.
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Hi.
I have some questions relating to India:
1. Can one follow his friend by getting sms tweets rather than going through net?
2. If yes, do the mobile phone ompanies charge for receiving tweets [which is not the case for other sms]
3. I hear that Tharoor has 60000 followers. Does it mean that most of them follow him on email? Does it mean that people often follow him or it means that they have clicked in their account to follow him and then forgotten to check what he is doing?
4. I run a small society. Will it be useful to tweet the happenings? All our members have mobile phones but only some have smartphones. They look at their emails only once a week or so.