Twitter cancel SMS delivery in Europe
Twitter have finally done the sensible thing and cancelled SMS delivery outside of Canada, India, or the United States and hurrah for it.
This cost most have been a serious drain on the company and has been mentioned by lots of people including myself as a worrying cost factor in the future development of twitter.
“It pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid placing undue burden on our company and our service. Even with a limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass these high fees on to our users”
If this secures and safeguards the future of twitter I for one am delighted and congratulate Biz and the guys for making this move sooner rather than latter.
Any idea on the cost per user in the US? Or is the billing structure different here?
cost for USA/Canada is about 1c per message, its RPP over there, (receiving party pays)
In Europe it could be anywhere from 3c to 8c depending on the country.
I think its an excellent move by twitter, $1000 per customer is completely unsustainable and this shows great corporate and financial management IMO
I agree, that model does not work. Makes switching to an iphone with a client like twitterific much more attractive now.
Well, I can see you’re not living in a country of bad data plans who’s just had Twitter SMS cut off.
I agree it’s a good business decision, but wouldn’t putting in place a paid alternative — see http://www.crushofthemonth.com/a/2008/08/no-more-free-tw.html been more of a reason for applause?
Right now, this decision leaves a huge amount of Twitter users stranded. Not nice. Makes sense, but not nice.
There are already some new services out there, providing tweet via sms delivery for low prices. https://twittex.com does it for 5p/msg.