Twitter Brings SMS Back into Play

Written on Thursday, April 29, 2010

Though Twitter has always used its 40404 short code for mobile tweeting, the company has taken a lot of emphasis off SMS recently due to the sheer number of messages that pass through its system, and the cost of doing so.

To bolster its SMS capabilities and help scale the massive amount of texts coming in and out of its systems, the company today announced that its acquired Cloudhopper, a startup specializing in SMS and MMS technology.

Twitter had already been working with the startup for the past eight months to try and help manage the billions of text messages it sends worldwide, and has finally decided it was a perfect fit for the future of Twitter’s SMS capabilities.

In the announcement of the acquisition via a blog post, Twitter revealed that it processes close to a billion text messages a month worldwide.  While Twitter was originally designed to be mobile (hence its 140 character limit), the company underestimated its popularity and cost.  You may remember back in 2008 when Twitter decided to stop sending messages in the UK, claiming that it could cost as much as $1000 per user per year to do so.

Though details as to how Cloudhopper’s technology will be put to use going forward are still unclear, Twitter said the acquisition would enable them to connect directly to mobile carrier networks in countries all over the planet.

Through Twitter’s past and present evolution, SMS has always and will always be an integral part of its growth.  Digging a little deeper to try and bolster the way it handles SMS was becoming inherently necessary, and Cloudhopper will hopefully fill the gap that was growing larger and larger.

Posted in sms marketing, social networking |