SMS Archive

This afternoon at SXSW I caught up with Tatango CEO Derek Johnson. Tatango is a group SMS tool we first covered last summer when they launched the service. Tatango is similar to another group SMS service we covered, txt_blaster.

Check out my 2 minute video with Derek where he discusses Tatango, why bloggers are using it and how they plan to make money. He also discusses Tatango.TV which is their new 24×7 live video stream from their office.

Twitter has announced that as of their post time, there will be no more outbound SMS messages delivered to Twitter users in the country of Canada. This follows similar shutdowns in the UK this past summer. The Twitter blog notes, "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.)"

In September there were reports that Verizon in the U.S. were going to triple rates for SMS which would also put the hurt on services like Twitter.

B5Media CEO Jeremy Wright is visably upset by this change as per his messages post announcement:

“WTF?!!! TWITTER LET ME PAY FOR PRO SERVICE SO I CAN GET MY F*CKING SMS’S IN CANADA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“@supernovacom – bite me. This SUCKS. I’ve been asking to pay for over a year! LET ME PAY. You can take my SMS but you can’t take my freedom!”

Not really sure why anyone would need to use the SMS service anyway – it’s ok, you can check your messages when you get back to the office. Knowing who ate what or whether their dog took a piss on the carpet can certainly wait. And you can always open a Web browser on your mobile and visit the service that way if you need to know whats "going on".

Mobile Marketer is reporting that Verizon Wireless has "decided to levy a 3-cent transaction fee for every outbound SMS message sent to its subscriber base". One of the immediate questions is whether the other carriers will follow suit. For some marketers this charge is double or triple what they are currently paying. The article explains that this will affect a variety of service providers, "The rate increase will affect heavy users of legitimate outbound SMS messaging in the entertainment, retail, sports, news, weather, travel, food and political sectors. But it will also affect the mobile service providers they use to send out messages, such as SMS aggregators, providers and agencies."

Verizon Wireless says this is the first increase since 2003. B. Raney, executive director of corporate communications at Verizon Wireless said of the price increase, "Just like any business, we reassess our charges to make sure they align with our costs for providing the service and sometimes it becomes necessary to make adjustments".

NYC mobile blogger Dean Collins notes, "Basically Verizon have slammed shut the SMS industry in the USA".

My question is will this sms message increase affect Twitter? If it does, how will Twitter react? We know Twitter stopped offering SMS service in the UK because the costs were apparently $1,000/yr for 250 messages per week per user.