Twitter recently announced that they are to stop sending SMS updates free outside the USA. I'm not really bothered about this as I use Twitterific for the iPhone, but what confuses me is why they don't seem to want your money. Let's consider the following quote from the Twitter blog post:
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.
What would you do?
- Shut down this major feature giving no notice to users and announcing it with a post on your company's blog.
- Tell your users about the problem and give them the option to pay for SMS updates if they want. Maybe even make a few pennies out of it in the process?
I guess if you went for option #2, you'd only get a few users to pay for the service but it's the principle. My only guess is that Twitter's shareholders have a long term goal and are thinking about the end game rather than making short term profits.
