Free SMS via Twitter

Did you know it is possible to send SMS(Text Messages) to your friends for free using Twitter. Let me explain.

Receiving tweets via SMS
In some countries, you can receive twitter updates via SMS to your mobile phone and you can also send tweets via SMS. This is quite handy if you don't own a smart phone.

You first have to check with your mobile service provider whether they provide this service.

For example:
In New Zealand, Vodafone and Telecom will send tweets to your phone for free but tweeting via SMS will cost the normal charges.
The service it very fast. As soon as you tweet, within a couple of seconds the SMS will be received.

How do you set this up?

• Log onto twitter
• Go to the "Settings" link in the top right
• Go to the "Devices" tab.
• Provide the details required. They ask for your mobile number
  
• They will display a code which you need to text to a number they show in order to verify the mobile user.
• You are done.
  

You can choose from which users you want to receive updates
This is a very nice feature because you don't want to receive SMS tweets all day long.
If you go to the list of the people that you follow, you will notice that you can select from which people you would like to receive SMS updates. This just gives the user more control of what content they would like to receive via SMS.

Sleep Interval
You can also specific a period of time where you don't want to receive SMS updates on your mobile phone. This can be setup in the "Devices" tab.
For example, if you set the period from 9PM to 9AM, you will not get any tweets to your phone during that time interval which is handy if you don't want to be interrupted when you sleep.

Since you have everything setup and have some background information, I can now explain how the free texting/SMS to your friends can work.

Free SMS
This idea assumes that your friends are on twitter and have SMS alerts setup.

If you direct message the person, that person will get that message as a text message and no one else will know about it. Its just between you and the person it was sent to.

Example 1:
You are sitting at your computer and you want to message your mate. Just log onto twitter and send then a direct message.

Example 2:
If you have a smart phone which can access the Internet, you could also log onto twitter and and direct message them. If there is free Wi-Fi then there is no cost to you.

You can also take advantage of twitters broadcasting capabilities.
For example, if you want to message something to all of your friends, you could just send a normal tweet and then all your friends would get that message on their mobile phones. So you don't have to text each of your friends one by one.


Facebook Status Update
I have setup selective Facebook updates from my twitter account.
This means if I tweet and its end with "#fb", that tweet will also be posted as a status update on Facebook.
This is another handy way to update your Facebook from your phone.

Twitter

I wanted to share a few thoughts about Twitter. Twitter is actually a very good service. It provides a means of sharing information. I have learnt a lot by using twitter. My general IT knowledge is getting better day by day and you learn lots of new things. Its very addictive once you start using it.

Twitter is quite different from a blog. Since twitter restricts the tweet to only 140 characters, it encourages you to tweet often about things that you would like to share.
On the other hand blogs allow you to write as much as you want and include different types of media (pictures, videos). Therefore writing blogs requires more thought. So you might notice that people tweet much more than updating there blog.

So for more up to date news, twitter is good.
Examples of some news company's that use twitter:

• The New Zealand Herald: http://twitter.com/nzherald
• CNN: https://twitter.com/cnn

Twitter is also used as a means to exchange URLs with the help of URL shorting services like tr.im, is.gd just to name a few.

But if you want detailed information, then you will get that from a blog. So blogs and twitter kind of serve different purpose.

Another nice feature of Twitter is that it keeps track of all the people that you are following your tweets and all the people that you follow.

Twitter is one of the biggest things happening on the web. If you read feeds about technology, twitter is mentioned lots, much more than facebook. Its cropping up in magazines, radio, you name it.

Those are just some ideas I had about Twitter and blogs.

My twitter details and updates are on the side of my blog.