TechWinter

Posted by email from rogerkondrat’s posterous

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As I’m sure many of you here in the UK have, this morning I received notification that in the UK we’ll no longer be getting Twitter updates delivered to our phones. You can send updates to the usual number, but you won’t receive them. Apparently it’s costing too much.

I’ve always wondered how they were managing to send that many texts out and make the company profitable, and now I guess I know the real answer: They weren’t. In the US, Canada and India they’ve managed to create partnerships with the telco’s that allow them to continue to offer these services free to users, but not here in Europe. They say they’re planning to introduce new local numbers in the weeks and months ahead but will that honestly be enough to maintain the service when there are such a slew of other social networking sites competing for the same ground?

To me and, I suspect, the majority of twitter users, it’s the immediacy of receiving updates to your phone that makes twitter such a valuable service. Let’s say I’m suddenly at a loose end after work and fancy meeting friends for a drink so I fire off a twitter and those on my list who are just packing up to leave work or are heading for the underground can change their mind and get together with me. Now though, unless you’re getting updates via IM or the web, you’re not going to know. Sure, I can check the twitter website on my phone, but what if you don’t have a data plan, as many people don’t yet, you’re just not going to hear about these things.

If it’s going to be months until new numbers are available, people will find something else to use. Once they’re doing that, it’s unlikely that they’ll all switch back again. Unless a resolution is found for this quickly, I think Twitter could fail dramatically over here.

So, the big question seems to be, why didn’t they come clean about it all and offer a subscription service. There’s now a good deal of momentum behind Twitter, it’s become a very useful service to people that we rely on, it’s the one social networking system that I use every day. I’d be happy to pay a subscription for it, at a reasonable cost. You could perhaps have a sliding payment scale based on your usage, keep it free for new people and those who don’t use it a lot, but when you start being a serious user, you have to pay a monthly or annual fee for the service.

Twitter really got the ball rolling for the normobs to get into social networking, this move makes me wonder if they’re going to drop it catastrophically. I know that I’m going to spend some time today looking for alternatives that I can use immediately, and will be putting the Jaiku application back on my phone and using that for now, even though most of my friends aren’t using it. I’m betting today that there’ll be a spike in new users on several other networks as people start testing other services to try and keep their communication lines open.

So, what do you think? Is this move likely to kill Twitter outside the US, or will people stay loyal enough to wait until they can get the service back again, and who might step in to pick up all those customers. It’s going to be interesting to watch.

Thanks to the guys at TechZulu for producing some solid quality videos.

Gizmo5 a VoIP service that competes with Skype has just added what they are terming ‘Universal IM’ which we understand to mean IM on any platform anywhere in the world and it inter-communicates with all the major IMs and even a couple small ones with only one exception - SKYPE. Sadly there is no connectivity with them.

Gizmo5 the little Train to Skypes Juggernaut continues to innovate.

Have you heard of Gizmo5? No. Well then you should check them out because they are the ultimate messaging tool and their VoIP rates to Landlines and Mobiles tend to be cheaper that Skype.  Right now they have a 60 country ‘all calls’ free offer that costs nothing and allows a limited number of minutes to be used each week.

Gizmo5 works on all platforms including Linux

If you would like to aggregate all your IMs under one software or web-based service then Gizmo5 is really convenient as you can use them across all platforms, Macs, PCs, Mobile phones, Tablets, etc.  Additionally you can call your friends and tell them all about Gizmo5 too and you get more minutes for free for that. Its Win Win.

Do I sound like I am pushing Gizmo5? Yeah I am, but not for pay but because I really like their service and their constant innovation across all platforms. If you join Gizmo5 or are a current user add me I would love to have more friends on their network.

My username is rogerkondrat.