Twitter and SMS

I am very good at texting now (although it was quite painful at first and my attempts elicited howls of laughter from my children).  However, I have not taken the next step which is integrating my cell phone with other on-line services.  We do not have internet capable cellphones in our family, but we do have unlimited text messaging.

I remember the story of Buck, a graduate student who was arrested in Egypt.  He had time to twitter a single word, “Arrested!” as he was taken away by Egyptian police.  Mobile devices are, of course, with you wherever you are.  SMS could be an option for those of us who do not have an iPhone, and iPod Touch, a Blackberry, etc.

Unfortunately, carriers have made SMS updates problematic in many countries other than the U.S.  In August, 2008, Twitter dropped full SMS update service to European users due to fees imposed by carriers.  Later, Canadian users were also affected.  It seems to me that the problem is with respect to people who are receiving updates from other twitter users (and you can easily see how quite a lot of traffic could be generated that way).  I believe that people can use SMS to SEND a tweet in any of these countries.  At any rate, apparently the US and India are the only countries that still allow full two-way communication via SMS.

To set up Twitter SMS on your phone, first you have to login to twitter and go to “settings”.  Look for the devices tab and enter your phone number.  You will be sent a text message and you must reply to 40404 with a captcha code that is displayed in the browser window.  Once the code is received, then you are ready to fine tune the settings that govern SMS services.

You can set up how you want the updates handled–direct messages only (which should give you all direct messages); on or off.  If you choose on or off, then you will be able to go through your “following” list and selectively enable specific accounts’ updates to be sent to your cell phone.  In this way, you can filter the activity.

The last step is to create a contact for Twitter that is associated with the number 40404.  Then you have an entry to which you can send your message.

I have an interest in receiving direct messages only (because I don’t get very many) and being able to send out tweets when I am not near an internet connection.  So the next time I am hiding in the closet during a tornado warning, maybe you will see an SMS tweet from me!