Twitter reported this week that it is axing its SMS service outside India, the US and Canada, causing consternation across the Twitter community. Almost immediately after this was announced, reports emerged of IT entrepreneurs taking up the challenge to look for a solution. The Editors Weblog spoke to - we think - the first organisation to launch a solution to the Twitter SMS issue: Twitsms.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

The Editors Weblog spoke to Delia Timms and Jeff Bonnes (the founders of Twitsms) after receiving their email announcing the launch of Twitsms, which was just two days after our posting on the SMS issue. (Our interview with Delia and Jeff follows below.)

Twitsms buys the SMS in bulk in advance to keep costs low. Prices start at 7 pence in the UK and 11 cents in Australia per SMS.
 
The Editors Weblog also contacted Twitter, to find out how it feels about Twitsms and other such services helping out the Twitter fans that have been affected. Twitter has previously acknowledged that SMS is a key part of its service, saying: "We love SMS. The lowest common denominator aspect of this service is a defining part of Twitter."



Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter Inc, told me: "We do not officially endorse any one service. However, we are interested in seeing what the response to these services will be."

There has been a certain amount of annoyance in aspects of the Twitter community about how Twitter have handled this issue, especially following Biz Stone's blog on the Twitter website calling for "perspective" on the issue. Svetlana Gladkova (Vice President of Business Development at Profy) does not sugar coat her views in her blog on Twitter's reaction, stating: "In my opinion, the team over at Twitter has committed quite a number of mistakes in handling this situation."

Here at the Editors Weblog, we try not to dwell on the negative and focus instead on solutions to our readers' problems; and Delia and Jeff look like they might just have one:

What inspired you to launch this service?

We use Twitter ourselves to keep in touch with friends and family both in Australia and overseas.  Jeff is American and particularly liked Twitter for staying in contact with his friends overseas.  So we understood personally how important it was for some Twitter fans to keep getting their SMS - even if they had to pay a very small fee for it.  Living in Australia we already have to pay fees for our SMS, so it is not unusual for us to pay to get our Tweets too.  We felt Twitter fans should at least have the choice to get their SMS, rather than just being cut-off by Twitter altogether.
 
How did you manage to set this up so quickly?

Experience and enthusiasm. We have built a few other successful internet businesses and have gained valuable experience over the past few years.  So we were fortunate to start out with some knowledge, skills and code. Jeff was able to apply learning from previous projects to speed up the coding for www.twitsms.co.uk. One of our other businesses does messaging and SMS already, so we were one step ahead with this. We were also able to use hardware and hosting from our other internet operations. We crowd sourced the graphic design for a fast turnaround.
 
What technology are you using?

We use Java and a web development framework called Grails. This allowed us to build  a very robust site quickly.
 
Can you explain exactly what arrangement you have established with the mobile companies?

Currently we buy SMS in bulk to keep the cost for users as low as possible.  As the site grows, we will look for ways to reduce costs even further.
 
Have you had any contact with the Twitter team about your project?

No we have not made contact yet, but will in the future. We hope that Twitter is happy that www.twitsms.co.uk and www.twitsms.com.au are keeping their fan-base connected outside of the USA, Canada and India!
 
What have been the early indicators been for Twitsms?

Early business is very strong. We knew there was a solid Twitter community and we knew they were annoyed about being shut off.  But were not sure whether they'd pay for their Tweets. However we have been happily surprised by the immediate interest from Twitter fans. They are more annoyed about Twitter shutting their service down, than having to pay a few cents to get their SMSs. Another surprising aspect for us has been the global interest.  www.twitsms.co.uk has been live for 4 days now and we've had contact from customers in the UK, Australia, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, Israel, Russia and France (of course!).
 
The use of Twitter itself has been a great springboard for www.twitsms.co.uk.  Twitter is a handy and powerful tool for communicating and getting immediate feedback from customers! It is also an efficient way to keep our customers updated as we are responding to requests and developing new features quickly.
 
What is your competition?

There is one site that has launched in competition and several still 'coming soon'. There has also been one site that has stopped development before they released. We are not worried by competition; we developed www.twitsms.co.uk because it is a service that we needed and wanted to share with the Twitter community.  Being first to market has been great. The feedback and early input from our customers is helping us ensure that www.twitsms.co.uk is the best alternative for the international Twitter community.

Sources: Twitsms, Twitter, Profy

See also:

Twitter reduces its mobile service, ends SMS updates service