SMS no longer exist for me

Byrichard

I saw a tweet saying that Americans now send twice as many text messages as Europeans and this makes me think of just one thing. It’s obsolete.

What I mean by that is that now that I have a data plan and skype and gtalk on my phone I refuse to send sms which I have to pay for when everyone I know uses at least one IM client. It’s so much cheaper (free) for me to chat with you on gtalk. There’s also more chance that I’ll get an answer.

I really don’t like the idea of sending sms when there is a better contemporary technology out there costing far less money 🙂

Just to give you an example. I’ve been with friends in Geneva and Lausanne chatting with other people via gtalk from bars, restaurants and the living room couch. I’ve even skype called a friend with the N95 and she’s in the US. All of this is free, inclusive data within my contract. I want you to modernise, let’s use mobile communication in a more creative way than missed phone calls and unanswered SMS.

Twitter are stopping SMS

Byrichard

Twitter are stopping all SMS for many territories due to cost. They don’t need to send sms. If they had an s60 application similar to that by Jaiku they would incur no extra costs. We would simply take advantage of our dataplans to download the messages at any time that the application is running.

Worldwide we are going to find that there are a lot of dissapointed users. At the same time the centralised conversation that twitter managed to encourage will spread across a number of platforms. As a result twhirl is a good alternative whilst waiting for things to settle.

If the companies can’t behave then we’ll rely on Air applications to aggregate and monitor what’s going on. I already watch seesmic, twitter, identi.ca and friendfeed with twhirl.

All this to say something simple. If you want me to keep coming to your site provide me with the best user experience possible. If not then I’ll be as uncommitted as possible. So will everyone else

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What is a Twitterstorm

Byrichard

The Twitterstorm is a description of an event where hundreds of 140 character messages are sent at the same time. The most recent example of this occurrence is the one that took place when news of Jaiku being swallowed by google broke. Both Twitter and Jaiku are similar. They both give you 140 characters to express yourself and they can both be taken with you.


When Jaiku was sold to Google the Twitter community has been wondering what’s next for them. That is true, at least for those who are not heavy users of twitter. For the more passive user Jaiku is more appealing because it’s got more bells and whistles. Twitter relies on your ability to express what is on your mind exclusively through text. Tinyurl does make the task a little simpler.


What made the storm so interesting is how over a period of just a few minutes hundreds of SMS could be received should you turn on twitter tracking as I did. I was been bombarded by messages at a tremendous rate. Everyone wanted to be able to say that they twittered the event. They did. Twitter didn’t go down.


Jaiku did though, after all there’s nothing more attractive than a website that’s just become part of the Googleverse. It’s fun to see these new media events. That’s right BAMS students. Do media events still occur? Yep, and the Twitterstorm around Jaiku is one of them.


We shall see many more of them as big stories break.

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Why You Should Use Twitter

Byrichard

Twitter is a short message that are only 140 characters long. It can be used in three ways. The first is by instant messenger, the second is by text messaging to your mobile phone and the third is via the web interface.

It’s referred to as microblogging, although not by me. I see it as being something more powerful.

The BBC, Google, and other companies have already used it for showing people what the latest news is. Of course, with such a medium you have to be careful not to send too many messages or people will give up.

Where it would come into its element is traffic info, radio schedules, or even event notifications. Imagine that you knew about this before rag week and that many of your friends were members. You could tell them “just finished ragging, on my way back to uni” or “only 20 tickets left for an event”. In other words, you can let people know what an organisation is doing quite easily.

Another way to enhance this is when you’ve got quite a lot of friends and they’re all members. “Hey, just handed in my assignment, going to sit in the grass outside halls, welcome to join” and many people who might have been bored now know where to find you.

Of course, you’re paying the price of SMS (text messaging) if you’re away from the computer but it’s at a local tariff to the best of my understanding. It’s an interesting development, similar to the status bar in many of the current messengers and on Facebook.