Twitter’s troubles with SMS – otherwise known as its a huge expense that it can’t really afford – have now seen it eliminate outbound SMS message for users in Canada.
The move comes a few months after Twitter was forced to shut down SMS service for U.K. customers.
It’s comes down to simple economics: it costs Twitter too much money, which is a challenge for a company that generates no revenue.
“We can’t afford to support this service given our current arrangement with our providers (where costs have been doubling for the past several months.) As a result, effective today we are no longer delivering outbound SMS over our Canadian shortcode (21212).”
For Canadians, it means they can send Tweets via SMS but can’t receive any Tweets using SMS. Of course, there are lots of cool tools out there to use Twitter on mobile devices without having to resort to SMS.
The sad part is Twitter’s move is yet another illustration how Canada is becoming a digital peasant. With carriers more intent on squeezing customers for revenue (aka ARPU) than providing innovative, new services, Canadians end up looking at the raging party going on without being able to participate.
Of course, it would also help if we had access to online services such as Hulu and Pandora but that doesn’t appear to be happening any time soon.
Twitter held out hope it can revive SMS outside the U.S. “There is a realistic, scalable SMS solution for Canada (and the rest of the world),” a post on Twitter’s blog read. “We’re working on that and will post more details on the Twitter blog as we make progress.”
For more, check out CNet.
Technorati Tags: twitter
7 Comments
I had a look at Hulu when I was in San Francisco last month. I almost cried at how awesome it was, and almost cried again when I had to leave.
I think the issue of SMS for Twitter is a bit of a different issue altogether, but as a whole, I agree: Canada’s a bit of a digital have-not, and its a pity there isn’t anyone championing this cause on a national level.
Cheers
t @ dji
Similar to when the UK lost their SMS messages, there’s a good opportunity for new players to enter the market (assuming it’s big enough).
For those in a position to do so, get some PR generated around your new (or upcoming) replacement solution early!
Cheers,
Brian
I was kvetching about this just yesterday. Twitter SMS, delay in iPhone, no apparent plan to bring the Amazon Kindle to Canada (apparently partly because of the telecom issues/infrastructure)… Sigh.
Well that’s sad news, just as I was getting to like to easy update via SMS feature (thru to Facebook). Without opening up by mobile browser, any recommendations on another status update service via SMS or email ?
I dont think this shows canada is a digital peasant (though other things do).
I think this totally shows that twitter is a technology with no revenue earning business potential.
If there was a demand for outbound sms they would be able to afford to deliver them.
It’s time that we kill of technologies with no long term value.
Cheers,
Dean
No, Dean. You might kill the company and the app, but the technology still has value for a lot of people. Like everything based on proprietary non-scalable solutions, Twitter will be replaced by open scalable solutions. Look at tweet federations, maybe based on Jabber/XMPP. There’s a chance laconi.ca shows the way here.
/O
Hi,
I thought you might be interested to know that myself (@PaulKinlan) and (@prawlings) have launched a twitter service called Twe2 (http://www.twe2.com) that gives Twitter users their DM’s, @replies and custom searches via SMS for free. The free part is that the messages are advertising subsidised.