TweetSG – SMS to Update

I can understand as a user, you are frustrated when a system fails you. Even if you were to update like “TweetSG, your system is fuck up or TweetSG U SUCK”, I respect that because it’s your Twitter profile and you are entitled to write whatever you see deem fit.

If you were to add @TweetSG in your not-so-nice updates, in case some of you aren’t aware, MOST if not ALL Twitter clients will show it on my screen. Depending on my mood, I may just overlook those updates but if I’m not in a good mood, I will just delete you from the system and ask you to go screw yourself.

My brain is not made of circuit board and I don’t earn a single cent from you. To me, this system is just a small little experiment to test certain equipment and ideas. The system was designed to “cross-follow”, ie. “I follow you, you follow me” so that system notices can be disseminated to users. One can still use TweetSG without following @TweetSG account.

Yes, statements that I update on TweetSG profile will be seen by many, about 7000+. Whenever possible, I will help broadcast some local blogshop “advertising” requests and even new SMS-to-Twitter services. If you are one of those who dream to have lots of followers or think that I should have crafted my Twitter updates in a certain way because of the number of followers and unreasonable bitchers, go setup your own service/account and preach your own gospel. If you don’t like my style of writing, get lost.

I concede, as an individual, I am incapable of providing a 100% up-time service and nice-to-everyone personality. I appreciate kind users who shared some ideas to monetize this service. However, I have yet to come across an interesting model that pays off. If those ideas were to be good enough, it should be the online news that I read daily. As far as my experience tells me, Singaporeans will bitch even louder when they paid a few dollars for some services.

SMS Tweeting in Singapore (even 1 way) did caught-on in a way that a few players have also started equivalent and even better systems that I openly shared with users both here and on Twitter. How they are running it is their problem. I don’t give a crap if you move to another system or unfollow.

Don’t expect me to be polite to you if you don’t know how to be polite in the first place.

Before and After removing viral URL in SMS updates

It’s a Game of Numbers

This is not the stock market chart showing before & after the financial crisis, this graph illustrates the effects of having a URL (http://tweet.sg) at the end of each SMS updates via TweetSG.

TweetSG started off handling 72 messages/month in the beginning all the way to 197121 updates in July. The live monthly SMS update stats can be seen here -> http://sms.tweet.sg/stats/tweets/month , signup live stats => http://sms.tweet.sg/stats/join (obviously there is no growth after I turned off signup)

Sum the SMS numbers from beginning to June equates to 150501. This value is still less than that of July: 197121. I’d  essentially spammed more than 150501 URLs in Twitter-sphere. July’s figure was not included since I’d turned off the URL early July.

Other effects

The growth effect is clear by now. Now the not so obvious stuff:

Complains. There are bound to be vocal users who simply want it free from URL and are not willing to do anything to contribute back. My way of handling has always been “tit for tat”, you want URL free? Put a banner to link-back in return.

I am not that unreasonable to force the URL down your throat. There are documented options for both groups of people, those with blogs and without blogs. It is a one time effort. That being implemented, there will still be whiners who don’t wanna read or do but just bitch.

As predicted, once URL removed, less bitching, less support.

Google Pagerank. This blog started off as ZERO Pagerank. With these URLs and banner link-backs, it went up to Pagerank 3 in quite a short time. Rather decent since I hardly write much on this blog.

Bumping up your Pagerank makes it even easier for users who are keen to try Twitter via local SMS to find the service since the search engine will be helpful by now.

Web-traffic. Someone made a comment that there will be hardly any recurring web-traffic to this blog; I beg to differ as you can clearly see from the graph. Essentially there are two types visitors:

1. Those who want to try out SMS to Twitter

2. Those who thinks the URL has something to do with the context of the particular Twitter update of interest

Group 1 tend to stay longer within the How-to page. Group 2 will just drift off very quickly (aka Bounce).

Group 2 outnumbers Group 1 but most visits came from Singapore, about 80+%.

Suppose there was a way to show contextual ads related to initial Twitter-update of interest, will there be a higher click-through to those type of ads?

Given the time & short attention span that I have for TweetSG, I took the shortcut and did the easier things: static/rotational banners and contextual Google Ads. It was not very promising, something to note for advertisers.

Conclusion

Spamming is good for your service but inform up-front, allow opt-out.

Can this system scale further? Yes.    Will you do it? No, can’t be bothered now.

To those Singaporeans who ask “Why do all these when you don’t make money???”. I do not do things just for the sake of money alone. I enjoy experiments & designing systems even if it does not relate to my field directly.

To some of those local social media “experts”, your entries are boring and useless. Knowing what does not work doesn’t mean you know what works. Your cyber lip-services are just like bad blow-jobs.

Don’t talk to me about market-share, I am in the position to level the entire playground by releasing the system know-how to folks who are willing to offer their time & resources for the benefit of other users. The better question is, who is willing to run and maintain such systems.

I saw quite a few well-meaning supporters summarized this saga into 140 characters but may have misreported this whole thing. This saga is not about users being n00b or not a n00b. If I dislike n00b so much, why would I let the system to use for all in the first place?

I interpret a person’s message to me based on his/her intent & attitude. I am not saying I am perfect in my manners, in fact, it is my weakness and I admit it that I take it personally since this is my personal project. Some of these social media “consultants” are in fact correct to point out my flaws.

But heck, who doesn’t have an ego when he can create a system single-handledly that processes 255827 incoming SMSes for 9000+ users in a span of 7 months at $322 Singapore dollars? (excluding my man-hours but including modem, SIMcard + running-cost. VPS not included since it is already paid for)

Am I apologetic to those who got it from me by “going against me”? No. I still believe they deserve it. If it is a good lesson for me, it is also a good lesson for them to go around airing opinions in a public system to me.

TweetSG follows 8000+ & 7000+ followers. Typically, I read tonnes of updates from tonnes of people. The interesting ones I re-post, the others, I kept my thoughts to myself. I’d never go around telling any user  my update: “I am going to eat mac” is cooler than yours. (Btw, it is Mcdonalds, not Macdonalds. You can’t swallow an Apple product)

I understand some local social media “specialists” love to capitalize. But I would also like to point out, during the infancy of this system, it is the similar bunch of “specialists” who said “Why is he doing this? Doesn’t he know there’s such thing call data-plan?” or “Woah, there will b more n00bs on Twitter.”, “aiya, it won’t work one, 1-way SMS only”.

In fact, I don’t really like to use the word n00b. If determination of n00bness is based on when one started using Twitter or about “coolness” or “righteousness” of their updates are, then I am a n00b too. One who can become very uncivilized and barbaric when he wants to.

However, It was those statements that I mentioned earlier from these “experts” that motivated me. Drove me to change a clumsy password based system that was convenient for me but not for the user, to a system that was convenient for users but not for me. To prove that on-the-go Twitter can be still OK with 1-way messaging.

I think we should all give our local social media “experts” a round of applause for giving me that motivation to run the system this far.

That being said, this will be the last entry for this saga. There are important things to do like doing house-work at my new place and other OFFline things that matter.

Once again, new users, please visit http://sgbeat.com/ and/or http://smsyo.com/ (they are not associated with me & are confirmed friendly) for local numbers to update Twitter with SMS. For current users, all messages will be free from URL. This means no residual web-traffic for me but also means I don’t have to answer people who can’t read. I now see it as I lose some, but I gained more.

“Door closing… tu tu tu tu… Apologize for any inconvenience caused”.