140Char

A bit of a microblogging round-up.

There’s been a bit of discussion about the Hitwise findings released by Heather Dougherty, that claim Twitter traffic surpassed Digg for the first time. OK, when I say discussion, it’s the normal coincidence of Techcrunch and ReadWriteWeb both jumping to analyse the same topic when it appears. (Having almost identical headlines didn’t help!).

And in the UK, it’s grown by 974% in 12 months! It’s now the 291st most-viewed website in the UK – with fastest growth among 35-44 year olds.
Apparently European CEO’s might not get Twitter, but it’s users do – as shown by the amazing growth of Twestival,  which has grown from a group of London-based Twitter users getting together, along with some gatherings in places like Toronto and Vancouver. The next one, on February 12, will now have 100+ cities around the world hosting events in aid of charity:water. And the first release of London tickets sold out in a couple of hours.

Stephen Fry is a British celebrity and icon, and to celebrate 50,000 following @stephenfry he’s set quite a challenge, which has definitely hit UK productivity today! (Via thatcanadiangirl). Entry is by submitting the best tweet using 50 letter Ls.

And speaking about celebs, one of the most mainstream TV hosts in the UK, Phillip Schofield, is not just on Twitter (@schofe), but verified himself by referring to Twitter live on the mid-morning chat show This Morning. (via PaidContent: UK). While I wouldn’t credit the host of This Morning and Dancing on Ice as the sole tipping point for Twitter becoming mainstream, it’s another big push of added momentum.

It seems that Canada has joined the rest of the world in losing the ability to receive Twitter updates via SMS, as revealed on the Twitter Status Blog. As with the rest of the world, the blame is placed squarely at Mobile carriers:

‘We can’t afford to support this service given our current arrangement with our providers (where costs have been doubling for the past several months.)’

The post continues:

‘The ability to update Twitter over SMS will still be supported over 21212. But we know that this is only part of the experience and we want to make Twitter work in the way folks want … regardless of where they live.

There is a realistic, scalable SMS solution for Canada (and the rest of the world.) We’re working on that and will post more details on the Twitter blog as we make progress.’

It seems a little strange this appeared on the Status Blog, and not the Official Company Blog, which is what happened when we lost Twitter updates via SMS in the UK. And at the time, there was the promise of several new local SMS services across Europe – but I don’t think anything has been arranged yet, and to be fair, if you’re not being monetised or bought by Facebook, then the costs do start to add up:

‘Even with a limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US.’

SMS is obviously a hugely profitable enterprise for mobile providers currently. And I doubt much will change on that front for some time – but hypothetically, with the rise of smart phones and access to social networks (and fortunately, Twitter and clients), could this a cause for even the start of a decline in SMS usage? Any mobile phone experts got any idea of the figures, and whether smart phone usage means less SMS?