Twitter's UK text replacements - it's going to be hard work

I’ve just had a very nice ham sandwich.

I’m having a coffee in the canteen.

I’m about to get on the plane. It’s quite busy.

I am in Marylebone, United Kingdom.

I am in Euston, London, United Kingdom.

What a busy day. Now it’s time to do the ironing.

So.  Many of us will happily receive such drivel from Twitter when it’s free.

But at 10p, or 5p a text?

There’s a teeeny bit of value from receiving drivel via Twitter — i.e., your phone beeps and, for a moment, you feel slightly popular.  And at least you didn’t have to pay for the privilege.

When Twitter sensibly decided that they couldn’t afford to continue paying to transmit millions of drivel tweets to their UK users, a veritable array of companies sprung up offering to send you updates from your Twitter feed by text.  The key difference?  You hafta-pay.

That’s that section of the industry dead.

To setup a paid-for Twitter-by-text service is to totally misunderstand the medium.  Twitter messages are near-to-valueless.

They’re generally almost useful.

Be clear about the definitions of those two words I’ve just used.  There’s useful.  Then there’s almost useful.

Firstly, I’ve no desire to arse about paying for drivel to be delivered to my handset.  Especially when someone decides to take it upon themselves to send multiple drivets tweets.  I could possibly be persuaded to pay to receive text updates from various blogs.  But now that I’m having to think cash, I’m moved to just use my RSS reader on my phone.  Cheaper.

Oh dear.

One such new service that’s recently launched to fill the outgoing Twitter UK text gap is called Twittex.  I got a note in via the wires about them.  Backed by VOIP provider, Gradwell.

Make it 0.5p or 1p and I’ll think about it.  But at 5p, I simply don’t value the drivel enough.  I applaud the ingenuity and the entrepreneurial spirit though.

How about you?  Have you rushed out to buy such a facility?