Twitter Finds Now It Has The Leverage On Mobile Operators
from the oh-so-now-you-want-to-be-my-friend dept
One issue that's constantly popping up these days is friction between distributors and content or service providers. Companies on either side of the equation often overvalue their contribution, whether it's movie studios thinking they have the leverage over Netflix, or ISPs thinking they've got the upper hand over the likes of Google when it comes to net neutrality because they "control" the pipe. The content or services are worthless without the distribution; without the content, the distribution is worthless. It's not the case where one side always has the power, and often over time, the balance of power shifts. Such is the case with the news that Vodafone UK has enabled Twitter SMS services for its customers. Twitter irritated some of its international users last year when it stopped sending them SMS updates because of the costs. It's a pretty typical story in mobile: if you have a service you want to offer to users via SMS, you've got to be prepared to pony up the cash to mobile operators to reach "their" customers. When Twitter was a nascent service used by web dorks and media types, somebody like Vodafone wouldn't care about it. But as the service has gone mainstream, suddenly it behooves Vodafone to strike a deal with Twitter, make the costs workable, and be able to offer the service to its customers. The mobile industry has long engaged in these stupid battles over who "owns" the customer. Typically, the operator's take has been that they own the pipe, so they own the customer. But maybe they're finally figuring out that without any compelling services to travel through it, the pipe's not such a big deal.
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We are not a set of pipes
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Re: We are not a set of pipes
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free service?
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Re:
While it's true that this is not equal to free, it's also not truthful to say that the company is "passing on costs" when they charge either sender or receiver. The only way that could be true is if the mobile carrier lowers the costs for maintaining the phone's connection, etc. to balance out the costs between the two. THEN, the carrier could claim that it is "passing on costs". As it is, the carrier is charging more for virtually nothing (the servers used to store history of those messages are already set up to store that data - they store cell phone call data).
Currently, carriers provide this service for NEGLIGENT costs. This is good business for them, but it's biting them in the butt, especially with stupid moves like T-Mobile claiming that costs have gone up for text messaging, so it has to pass those costs on to customers. That's BS.
If they want to charge their customers for providing the service, no one is going to complain because it just makes sense to do so. It's even ethical. But Bull-Shitting customers is not and customers don't like that. I can't tell you how many of my friends are actually considering giving up text messaging altogether because of the hassle and stupidity of the carriers. I personally already blocked all text messages because I didn't want to fork over $10 a month for a text plan or potentially $40 a month for the 100 text messages that people send me that cost $.40 apiece. So, I had my friends learn how to send their texts to my email address instead. Not a solution for everyone, but I was tired of the charges, and I don't have $10 a month to spend like that...it's much better spent on other things.
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