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Twitter Says Bye Bye SMS to Canadians; Jeremy Wright Loses It
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".
Third party app data doesn’t work on my berry. Web browsing does, but DMs don’t on the web version. So the ONLY way to get DMs is SMS.
It’s all I use it for, but it’s a primary means of communication for me.
Le sigh. I’d really be happy to pay for this, if they’d let me :(
hmm – why can’t you go to twitter.com on your mobile browser and click direct messages? *confused*
Doesn’t show up on my berry browser.
is the right menu there at all? perhaps its pushed down to the bottom like the ie does?
Check out tweetSMS: http://www.tweetSMS.com
You can also use m.slandr.net — and that allows you to access DMs.
Allen, it is certainly not about knowing who ate what or whether their dog took a piss. Before Twitter disabled the outbound SMS messages you could basically use Twitter as a free international text messaging service. This was extremely useful, especially for people that either don’t have a data plan or that don’t want to or don’t know how to use their built-in browser. It was instant communication.
You could also use services such as Sandy (which is now also being shut down, incidentally also by Twitter) for reminders.
Now how do I get my DMs? Via Email. Great. What about the people that can’t get email on their phone? What if your phone is configured to check for mail only once an hour? You simply miss potentially important DMs.
I love Twitter as a service, something I’m even willing to pay for, but we don’t even have that option. Instead of releasing new features, more and more disappear (SMS, track, IM, etc). Yet the bulk of the users stick around. I’d be hard pressed to think of another company or service with that kind of loyalty. Yet what does Twitter do? They seem intent on pissing their users off more and more…
Personally, I am more so upset about the handling of these situations than the features disappearing. Not ONCE has there been an advanced notice about one of Twitters features being shut down. International SMS? Gone overnight. Tracking? Suddenly disappeared. IM? Poof, gone.
As someone who lives in a country where twitter SMS has already been shut down – I gotta tell you it’s a totally different use of the service. There’s simply a wortld of difference between Push and Pull. Twitter is significantly better in Push form.
At tagga.com, users can create newsletter taggs that send SMS updates to subscribed users when updated. This could be a stop gap solution for Canadian twitter users dependent on SMS.