TweetSG – SMS to Update

Please note that my system DOES NOT KEEP ANY PASSWORDS.

ID and passwords are CASE-SENSITIVE.

join<space><yourTwitterID>

For example: “join jymster”

<yourTwitterPassword><space><yourUpdateMsg>

For example: “mypass It works! No need to send to international number!”

Make sure your phone does not automatically capitalize your first letter in the message, else your update may fail due to capitalization of your password.

deleteme

There are 3 countries that offers SMS broadcast to followers: US, India and Canada. Now Twitter is gonna kill-off this feature in Canada.

Not too long ago, in my former company with a few colleagues then, we wanted to do something like Twitter. The idea was more towards broadcast to a group of friends for organizing activities. I didn’t know about Twitter then.

We came to one conclusion: this model of service will kill itself due to cost. And I agree with Siegler that in a way Telcos are greedy. If we pause and think, mobile broadband is actually canabalizing text messaging.

The usability of internet base chat clients (eg mobile MSN) is far more attractive than primitive SMS text that is generally a one-way messaging. In short, lowering prices for SMS doesn’t make sense for a telco because doing so does not create huge incentives for users to switch back to SMS texting if they are avid mobile broadband user and in fact lowers their volume revenue.

I believe the general strategy of many Telcos is to lower internet-data plans to encourage users to get online on their mobile devices. Bumping up SMS pricing and giving unlimited-internet transfer is a classic execution of that strategy.

Sad but true, Twitter is at the mercy of Telco when it comes to cost and infrastructure. Ultimately it is still up to users to decide to continue tweeting if SMS broadcast is phased out.

Re-installed the blog into a separate server folder to make it neat. The basic SMS handler should be ready by next week.

Will release the number to SMS once the SMS handler system is ready. Probably will let a few beta users to try out first before opening the signup pages.