Is the end of SMS the end of Twitter?

Readers of this blog will know I like Twitter. And there are many others like me out there.

Yesterday I received my email advising me that because I don’t live in 1 of 3 countries, I would no longer receive the free SMS updates of the people I was following on Twitter.

Part of the attraction of Twitter is that you get to interact with it in a very cool way using your mobile, and out and about you get to interact with the people you follow. True mobile interactivity.

Due to their huge growth and of course the costs of this service they have turned it off.

While I won’t quit on Twitter just yet, I have started to look around at alternatives. Frankly I would probably pay for the SMS’s but that is not an option they have put in place for us Aussies. Well not that I have seen yet anyway. I don’t expect to get everything for free, like many users on the net, and am more than happy to pay for a service i get utility out of, but it seems their planning hasn’t factored me into their equation.

Facebook has an embedded widget for smart phones so that you get basically the same deal as being online, I get updates like messages on my phone and it costs me, not them – that’s smart thinking.

Maybe Twitter should have thought through all its options before it shut the gate on a community that has been extremely loyal through all its downtime and other issues.

I guess they feel the USA audience is enough to see them through the rough times, but that only creates more ill-will in the smaller countries that have high usage and uptake rates like Australia. I see a pal of mine in the UK bemoaning the same deal there, so that big audience isn’t going to be happy either.

Twitter, maybe this time the Whale of success might sink your boat!

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