Canadian telcoms continue to shoot themselves in the head
So this week, Twitter announced that it would be killing off its outbound SMS service in Canada due to constantly climbing charges from Telco's.
Now I know there's a lot of ppl out there who don't use twitter, but I've used it for over a year now, and i like it. Its become part of my communication tool box. Part of the reason its such a neat little service is that it allows you to update it through your cell phone by sending a text message to a short code. BUT the other neat part is that you can follow other ppl's messages to your phone as well. Common Craft made a nice short video explaining it.
Losing that outbound service on twitter really puts a stick in the experience. I've enjoyed random coffee meets, event notifications, and even found new spots thanks to just sticking a questions on twitter. And using SMS is such a cheap simple way to do these things, because let's face it almost everyone has a texting package, but not everyone has mobile internets.
And I'm actually pretty upset that the outbound service is gone. But its not just about twitter, its about our telcoms as a whole. Search Engine has a good post up about how we're quickly becoming a communications ghetto in Canada. And I agree. The more we hammer services like SMS the larger barrier we have to just affordable simple communication avenues, and road blocks to application development and experimentation.
Over the last few years the internet has moved from being a type of system to more of an entity, its going to keep going in this direction, and Canada needs to get up to speed.
Rant over.
Now I know there's a lot of ppl out there who don't use twitter, but I've used it for over a year now, and i like it. Its become part of my communication tool box. Part of the reason its such a neat little service is that it allows you to update it through your cell phone by sending a text message to a short code. BUT the other neat part is that you can follow other ppl's messages to your phone as well. Common Craft made a nice short video explaining it.
Losing that outbound service on twitter really puts a stick in the experience. I've enjoyed random coffee meets, event notifications, and even found new spots thanks to just sticking a questions on twitter. And using SMS is such a cheap simple way to do these things, because let's face it almost everyone has a texting package, but not everyone has mobile internets.
And I'm actually pretty upset that the outbound service is gone. But its not just about twitter, its about our telcoms as a whole. Search Engine has a good post up about how we're quickly becoming a communications ghetto in Canada. And I agree. The more we hammer services like SMS the larger barrier we have to just affordable simple communication avenues, and road blocks to application development and experimentation.
Over the last few years the internet has moved from being a type of system to more of an entity, its going to keep going in this direction, and Canada needs to get up to speed.
Rant over.