Twitter announced a pretty big deal earlier today with India’s largest carrier Bharti Airtel, which will deliver tweets via SMS to their over 100 million users. You may be asking yourself
, why SMS? In India many of the over 1 billion residents and potential users don’t have access to high-speed internet via computer or mobile platforms. Compared to the US where most people use Twitter through its website of through a number of 3rd party clients and APIs. To reach the masses in India – as well as many other parts of Asia – SMS is the best way to go – today.
The new deal will allow Bharti Airtel subscribers to receive tweets via SMS for free, while sending tweets will incur the standard text messaging rate. While at first that may not seem like a big deal – at the volume
Twitter will no doubt reach quickly, making the ‘receive tweets’ adds up very quickly. Previously, Twitter periodically shut down its SMS service in many other countries because local carriers insisted they pay for the tweets being received for free by their users. This is one of the first cooperative deals for Twitter with a large carrier.
I would imagine that this is the first in a number of new deals Twitter will be cutting throughout Asia – and possibly other parts of the world – to expand its every-growing presence. Having worked with Bharti Airtel in the past, I am not surprised by their leadership in delivering the tools and applications their users want – even if it means changing their model. Big step forward as Twitter strives for 4 billion users as noted by TechCrunch.
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