14 DAY TRIAL // One of the social-networking services that registered massive growth lately is the micro-blogging Twitter, which has announced recently that Vodafone UK now allows once again updates via SMS. As many of you might already know, anyone is enabled to update Twitter via SMS, yet receiving tweets on the mobile phone has been up until now restricted to North America due to the fact that providing the service is a rather expensive business.
Twitter says now that Vodafone UK has agreed to allow users to send and receive SMS updates from the service with no additional costs included. The normal text messaging bundle with Vodafone applies to sending tweets from the handset as well, and there will be no extra fees. Moreover, it seems that the carrier will allow users to send tweets without deducting them from the subscribers’ SMS bundle during the first few weeks. At the same time, receiving tweets via SMS on the operator's mobile phones will also be absolutely free.
Users in the United States are also able to send and receive tweets via SMS without having to pay extra for the feature, and the service is also announced to be heading to Canada on Bell Mobility. Moreover, Twitter will continue to work with mobile phone carriers around the world to extend the feature to more users.
According to Jonathan Arber, IDC Analyst, “The deal is interesting in that it echoes a wider trend in the mobile industry. Excessive bundling of SMS on both the postpaid and prepaid side is causing revenue erosion in many markets, and operators are seeking new applications for, and new ways of deriving value from SMS. There is ongoing debate around whether social networks will cannibalise SMS, but in fact the two services fit together nicely in many cases. As social networks move closer towards the Twitter 'real time' conversational model (as evidenced by Facebook's recent makeover), mobile updates become increasingly valuable to consumers.”
He also added that mobile phones and Twitter were a perfect couple, due to the fact that the service had an “immediate nature,” and that SMS updates would enable users to “Tweet” while being on the move. Currently, there are already a number of mobile phone applications that were intended to do just that, and there are probably a large number of users that already discovered them and tweet through them.