Messing around with Twitter

Twitter has been talked about here on SMS Text News numerous times in the past, but I’ve got to admit when Ewan asked me to write a blog entry about them, I drew a blank. I’ve heard their name, seen a bit of press coverage, and read his blog entries, but never really had a chance to play with the service. So, with it being a rainy day here in London, I thought I’d give it a whirl.

The basic premise behind Twitter is staying in touch with your friends, and keeping them updated with what you’re doing. It’s sort of like Jaiku in a way in the sense that you’re ‘micro-blogging’ your activities, and there’ve been many words written on the similarities – and differences – between the two. I won’t go into great detail comparing the two right now as I’ll be here all day 🙂

Having signed up for a Twitter account, I added my mobile by texting in a confirmation code to a +44 long number. It’s yet another service that uses the 07624 Manx numbers, so rather kindly T-Mobile charged me international text rates. Within a few seconds, I’d got a confirmation text back from Twitter, asking me what I was doing at the moment. Another text back, and another 24p, and within a few seconds my current activity was on my Twitter profile.

So far so good, but it’s a lonely existance with no friends on Twitter so I invited myself to Twitter using a different email address, signed up a separate account, and registered another mobile. Then I sent a text to Twitter from the second mobile. One confirmation text back later, and my first mobile beeped with a new text from Twitter, with details of what my ‘friend’ (ie myself on the second phone) had just posted.

I’m quite impressed with the service, but three things concern me. First, cost to me. Admittedly Twitter have recently made some changes so there’s now a mobile compatible site, but that’s a pain in the arse. I mean I have to fire up my browser on the phone, hit the site, login, type in my status, etc etc – unlike Jaiku where I just flick through to the app that’s running in the background and tap a few keys. Playing with Twitter so far whilst writing this post means I’ve racked up about six or seven texts to the 07624 number, and at international rate (thanks, T-Mobile!) I’m down by nearly £1.50. That’s not good, and would be a real barrier to me using the service regularly.

Second, how does it make money? Jaiku have an app, there’s none of this fiddling around with texts. Twitter, however, have rather kindly forked out for a stack of texts to my mobile just in the last half hour. Admittedly they’re likely to be making a penny or so from each text I send them, but no way does that cover their cost of texting me. The more people I add, and the more status updates I sent, the more expensive it’ll get to them.

The third thing is real world usage. Don’t get me wrong, I’m impressed with Twitter. But how long will I realistically use it? I got a bit bored with Jaiku after a week or two, and with the aforementioned costs of running Twitter by text it won’t take long (probably til the next bill comes in) to realise it’s a rather costly way of telling everyone minute by minute what I’m doing each day.

Will Twitter last, or is it just another Web 2.0 mobile geek fad? Only time will tell..