There has been of course much talk on the web following Twitters announcement that they would be stopping SMS out from the service in all territories save the US, Canada and India. Why these regions? Well, in the US and Canada, as it was about 6/7 years ago here in the UK, you pay to receive SMS. India I’m not certain of, but it doesn’t *seem* to be the case looking at operators local sites, and considering the intense mobile culture out there, as well as the proliferation of free SMS services it doesn’t seem likely that that is the case there (please let me know if it is).
So Twitter have managed to negotiate and maintain deals with carriers in these regions and of course in these cases it is certainly in the carriers best interests as it really drives SMS use in the US and Canada where SMS uptake has been extremely slow. That’s great, and laudable, and as Sarah Lacy said today in amongst the ’stop whinging UK!” jibes, “They’re trying to build a business!” I couldn’t agree more, but I believe that if their model is predicated upon this one solution they have at their core – getting operators to agree to send their messages at no charge to Twitter – then it is as it always was; kinda broken.
We knew here in the UK when the service first took hold that it was non-sustainable, and there has always been a tacit understanding that the fail whale of free sms love might sink; we’re willing to pay! Sarah says in her post “…it can not be beholden to carriers” – but isn’t that exactly what continuing with only this model represents? Being totally beholden to the carriers that allow them to send messages from the service at no cost to their business? What about the day (which will definitely come) when the US and Canada follow the rest of the world in making receiving SMS free? Look, SMS is frankly in and of itself ridiculous; it’s DATA, and it’s data charged at £374.49 per MB… THAT, is unsustainable, in any market, and will be another bolt that comes shooting out of the bloated bodies of carriers worldwide eventually. So, the carriers are as much to blame/myopic.
The fact is, Twitters model has been partially broken from the outset, and the close down of European services is indicative of that. It’s also indicative of a telco community who can’t see the wood for the trees. Most importantly, this was an opportunity for Twitter to truly experiment with it’s model; keep the service free and bung a 40 character ad into the second text! Give me a bundle option! I disagree with Sarah’s position that Twitter finding new ways to continue sending me the messages I want to receive sets a bad precedent; I think it sets an excellent one, one which scales, one which presents Twitter with new business and revenue generating opportunities, and most importantly to me, means I continue to get the DM’s which have become a big part of how I communicate online.
Please take as read that of course I am not privvy to the nature nor detail of any operator deals struck here, I am speaking solely from what I see and understand of this subject, and am always happy to be corrected.
10 Comments, Comment or Ping
Twitter… srsly… I’d have paid for SMS… You never asked… This looks to be about controlling costs, not growing revenue, and that is a potential business fail.
The bigger red flashing light in the room is the differentialy between the per-bit prices of SMS and IP data on mobile. Again, srsly. The mobile operators aren’t helping themselves in the long term. Now people will be bashing on m.twitter.com and eating bandwidth, rather than hitting the (more efficient) SMS infrastructure. Hmmm…
August 14th, 2008
When did we have to pay to receive smses? I don’t think I ever have. Before I got a mobile I used to have a pager – and they were always pay to send, not to receive.
I think the US is different because mobile phones there have geographic codes, where as UK ones have special premium ones.
August 14th, 2008
Virgin was still charging pre pay users to receive SMS as early as 2001.
August 14th, 2008
for example; many carriers were, mostly on prepay tho.
August 14th, 2008
Totally agree with every word here; nothing else to add. Except perhaps a large sigh, for the short-sightedness of Twitter.
August 15th, 2008
It can’t be that hard to charge people for SMS bundles. The way this has been done suggests take-up and usage in the UK has got out of control and they had to switch it off quickly without having time to set up a chargeable system. No doubt this will appear soon – switching of SMS is an interim measure?
August 15th, 2008
What do we get with SMS from Twitter?
1. the ability to mark individuals to get direct updates from.
2. these updates get pushed to our phones.
If Twitter enabled us to gt an RSS feed from just the people we’ve tagged for device updates… then we use a reader or email generator to get updates on the phone. It’s not quite push (although some can get emails pushed), but we essentially get the same service – access to those we’re really interested in, on our phone…?
August 15th, 2008
GWAOT – I was sighing throughout the writing of post. Perhaps it is interim James, but it doesn’t *feel* like it, it feels like laziness, like a “we throw up our hands we can’t convince European carriers of our model, sorry guys, we tried!” stance which rings false. Twitter is a business, make no mistake.
August 15th, 2008
Tom – yes, a solution; ideally anything like that will be automated, but, the critical thing is that SMS is nigh on instant, and a native application to all mobile phones, so is intrinsically ideal.
August 15th, 2008
Twitter are saying that it was costing them up to $1000 a year to support UK users and even charging people would cost £50 a month for 35 tweets per day. It comes down to the high cost of SMS that you correctly point out is not really based on cost of delivery. As consumers we are willing to pay this cost but businesses cannot for multiple users and it’s really holding mobile 2.0 back as SMS is the communications channel in the absence of email … It’s not just twitter this is affecting – Shozu must be spending a fortune also if you look at how many SMS they send to you in the course of using their service.
August 17th, 2008
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