The Power Of Twitter

Written by Ashley Broadley on Tuesday, 17th January 2012 at 11:40

I love Twitter. So much more than I like Facebook. Both have their uses, and with the advent of mobile internet, they both prove to be rather useful tools.

I've had a Smart Phone since not long after the iPhone 3G was first released. I currently use a HTC Desire with MIUI ROM running on it. Not that the ROM has much to do with anything. I love my Smart Phone. I really couldn't imagine going back to a time without it.

That said, there are a few gotchas with Smart Phones. Like, how you need a data connection to do anything other than make a phone call, or send an SMS. If you don't have a data connection, you might might as well not have a Smart Phone. Or, if you're in a foreign country and your data service provider charges you an extortionate price per Megabyte transferred.

Recently, I welcomed my sister to the world of Smart Phones and even more recently to the world of Twitter. Or, rather, the Twitterverse.

For those that aren't aware, my Parents & Sister immigrated to Canada from England back in 2009. Since then, I've investigated many different ways in which I can keep in touch with them. Skype being one of the best ways, when we're all available to talk to each other, which isn't as often as I'd like. I've tried texting them, using Skype not just for Skype to Skype calls and even tried using the messaging side of Facebook to message each other regularly. Texting them was turning out to be expensive (International SMS are not included in my monthly allowance). Skype calls and Facebook messaging both required a data connection or WiFi.

I've had Twitter setup to text me tweets I'm mentioned in and Direct Messages for a little while now, but I've never used it the other way. Sending a text to Twitter to tweet or DM and such. But that's changed recently. I did have to double check that texts to Twitter were included in my monthly allowance, which I discovered in fact, were.

I managed to persuade my sister to use Twitter and setup her phone so that Twitter can SMS her too. I also had to make sure that these SMS were included in her bundle. Now we can both send an SMS to Twitter containing a Direct Message for eachother and receive one containing said message.

This basically means that, via the medium of Twitter, I can SMS my sister, who lives over four thousand miles away, with a time difference of 6 hours, for free. Plus, it's more convinient than having to open a browser, load the website, navigate, compose and send. All I need to do now is compose a single SMS sending a Direct Message to my sisters twitter account.

Twitter, thank you for making this form of communication so simple and convinient. Please continue to provide such an amazing service to the masses for free.

Tags: @twitter,, #smartPhone, Comments: Be the first!