Twe2 Brings SMS Back to Twitter's Global Users, Activists Rejoice

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-02-16 08:20:00 UTC
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Last August, Twitter announced that it would no longer support SMS for users outside of the US, Canada and India. The cost of SMS messages was simply too high for Twitter to support. Erik Hersman wrote a great post explaining why this was so important on his blog, White African:

Twitter represents a change in communication. By acting as a global gateway for updates via SMS (or the web), that then updates all of your followers, Twitter succeeded in breaking ground in one-to-many messaging..

Two examples come to mind, specifically addressing humanitarian uses; first, there’s the case of it being used in Egypt to help a jailed user, and second was when Juliana used it during the Kenyan post-election violence to update about events in Western Kenya in lieu of a blog post.

The point was that while many in the US simply used the SMS feature to be notified of direct messages or replies to their Tweets, in some parts of the world, activists were using Twitter to organize their dissent like never before. The rapidity with which messages could pass and the bridge the service provided between their mobile phones (which by and large are not internet-enabled) and the web brought a new force for civic organizing.

That's why I was so excited this morning to see a post on my friend Jon Gosier's blog about Twe2. Twe2's model is simple enough. After each message a user receives via SMS, they will also receive an advertisement. Simple as that. For many activists, this will be a small "price" to pay for the ability to once again have their best broadcasting system safely in their pocket.

Ever the entrepreneur, Jon also points out that Twitter itself is actively supporting the model, and speculates about whether Twitter's eventual monetization will be through signing deals with the most promising app developers:

Even more interesting is the fact that Twitter has ‘whitelisted’ Twe2 to proof it’s concept using their platform and to even develop with the companies much coveted oATH integration. Could it be that Twitter’s business model will revolve around formulating deals with developers that leverage their API? Only time will tell, but the fact that this will at least part of their idea for monetizing the service seem inevitable.

For now, I'm just glad to see that Twitter's global mobile base has their best tool for activism back again.

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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