twitter India Airtel and SMS

Twitter India Airtel and SMS

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 12:57 AM PDT

In India internet penetration is still on the floor except that urban areas. There are 2 reasons for that. First not many Indians in rural areas find internet useful in their daily life and secondly buying a cell phone costing Rs 5000 is still a costly deal when I can get a second hand phone or even a brand new phone in Rs 1500  which is damn good for making calls and sending sms. SMS this is where Airtel had struck a deal with Twitter.
Bharti Airtel has made a deal with Twitter so that you can send updates to your Twitter account from any mobile phone which supports SMS and that is available with any phone.  And here are the details

New User
• SMS Signup to 53000 @ Re 1 per SMS
• Follow instructions to go ahead and complete the registration

Existing User – Wanting to link their device to the Twitter A/c
• SMS Start to 53000 @ Re 1 per SMS
• Follow instructions to complete linking your Airtel phone to your Twitter A/c

General Guidelines & Keywords to Twitter Use
http://help.twitter.com/forums/59008/entries/14020

All you will do is to link your twitter profile with a number and keep sending SMS to 53000 and here is a list of commandswhich you can use it in the sms. Thanks SahyaBhatforsharing it today along with his experience here and here.
My View on Tweeting via SMS :
Like I said, Internet Penetration in India is still on the floor when it comes to rural sides and this is where SMS and Twitter can get along. However I still  feel the service might not be a big hit unless something is added along with it.

• It is difficult to correlate tweets if I need to open each and every sms. IMO SMS alone will never work , not directly. You need to load a very basic application to help them tweeting with an ease.
• Twitter is about conversations and there should be more ways to read other tweets easily before I tweet.
• There might be billion of users who dont get internet yet on mobile in India but then do they really use internet and if they dont why would they need to use twitter. ? If it has to become a success you need to give them a solid reason.
• It’s costly.  For every tweet i.e. Sms sent you will be charged Rs 1.

Now over to you.  Whats your thought on this ?
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