Twitter is a great service. Simple to set up. Easy to use. It’s based on SMS messaging, which is dead simple. But it’s a printing press for bores who tell you they are eating lunch. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it’s one of the first SMS systems with an API which creative programmers can put to good use. Thus, we have BBC Tech updates, Tube line Twitters, you name it. Now we even have Twitter Maps and Twitter vision. Great stuff. And hey, if you don’t like all the Twittering you can always turn it off, right? Personally I just re-route the ‘lunch eaters’ to a dedicated RSS reader like Twitterific and keep the more interesting Twitterers on my mobile. But Twitter is now having to pay to send out millions of SMS text messages a day on an almost global basis. They are getting no revenue from this, indeed it is a massive cost (unless I’m missing something?). So Twitter is going to have to find a way of making this work, or they are Twitter Toast.
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Mike Butcher is a former editor of New Media Age magazine, speaker and currently editor of TechCrunch Europe. Read more
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I hope Twitter will make it.
I hope Twitter will make it. If it doesn’t, I guess someone will pick up where it left off. Jokes are a very good idea. The knock, knock variety could work well
I don’t mind people twittering about anything, but I’ve had to become a bit picky about who I follow. It comes down to who you ‘add’ as friends, how many friends you add and whether you ‘turn them on’ or not. A number of folk I ‘follow’ are not turned on meaning, whenever I’m switched to mobile or IM I don’t receive their updates. The folks I might want to converse with are always switched on.
It’s a service that you do need to tweak a little bit to get something out of, but I have found it genuinely useful in a number of situations enough to make me believe in it’s fundamental potential to improve and speed up the conversation. Without doubt, it’s one to watch.
Mike, I think you could be
Mike, I think you could be missing the point. There is a mechanism for the costs of SMS to be reverse-charged – so what should be happening is that users are paying the 10p for the costs of the SMS.
That said – I’m not sure they’ve got that set up quite right in the UK, because I think it should be more expensive than it is, and they appear to be using a normal phone number.
Not everyone, Mike…
Not everyone, Mike… cough…
From what I can work out, text messaging in the USA works differently (anyone confirm?): just as you pay to receive calls on your cellular, you also pay to receive texts. Or, of course, they come off your bundle.
This has terrific possibilities with texting; since companies that want to try new and interesting things with texts don’t have to charge at least 10p for the privilege (and charge a sceptical user for stuff before they know whether the service is any good). From a corporate point of view, I wish this model existed in the UK. (From a consumer point of view, I’ve mixed thoughts.)
But I agree, I see absolutely no business model with Twitter; and the texting services they offer will result in, at least, a 5p charge every single text they send in the UK.
Good points Graham. And BTW
Good points Graham. And BTW I am not against people telling me they are “Eating a tuna sandwich” etc, but I only have so much ‘attention capital’ available to me each day. I am more interested in hearing from people when they have interesting points to make, or perhaps they are twittering their location and I happen to be close and able to meet up. I also like jokes!
In answer to your qu. about
In answer to your qu. about number of Twitters. “The sudden popularity of Twitter has seen the number of messages posted on its site jump from 20,000 to 70,000 a day, said Biz Stone of Obvious, the internet company which started the service. According to HitWise, which measures web traffic, use of the service jumped by 55 per cent the week after the conference, though it said Twitter was “still very niche” and had yet to reach the mass market.” http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d0ccbc46-daf7-11db-ba4d-000b5df10621.html
A very good, very obvious
A very good, very obvious point – inless I’m also missing something – and one I hadn’t really thought about until you articulated it. I wonder what VC cash is involved and whether a telcos buyout wouldn’t be the obvious direction?
Twitter’s fun, but increasingly unreliable, slow, inaccessible. It’s testing some folk’s patience.
Ok so how many Twitters are
Ok so how many Twitters are there a day? That’s some burn rate…
I would like to see football
I would like to see football and other sport scores pushed to Twitter via its API. I currently pay Orange 10p or more per football score, when this information could come from the BBC via my Treo IM client talking to Twitter on AIM over GPRS — at almost no cost.
Great observations about
Great observations about Twitter, which I have grown to love. I use Twitter as another marketing vehicle for my forthcoming book, ‘Notes From the MotherShip~Naked Invisibles.’ For authors, Twitter puts you in line with your demographic,once you find them amongst the ‘tuna sandwich eaters’ (not that there’s anything wrong with that or them). Mike, Great Blog of info here! Insightful comments. Thanks!
http://www.adriennezurub.com;http://www.adriennezurub.typepad.com
1p per SMS in bulk SMS I
1p per SMS in bulk SMS I believe (albeit really reliable services are around 3p I’m told); but that’ll still get really painful when that API gets worked!
Ed
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