Jon Russell

A little last week (dated 17 December) but nevertheless worthwhile highlighting news from Twitter of a new SMS service in Indonesia, in addition to the AXIS service announced in November.

  [Indonesia and Ireland] both have carriers that launched Twitter's Text Messaging service today. We are excited to announce that our friends at 3 Indonesia and O2 Ireland have both made the Twitter SMS service available to their subscribers without any additional fees. Sending and receiving text messages with Twitter is just like sending and receiving them with your friends. It's a simple way to tell the world what's happening while out and about by quickly sending a text message to Twitter. Additionally, users can turn on text notifications for individual people they follow as well as, direct messages.

Customers of 3 Indonesia have exciting additional functionality available. 3 is the first carrier in Indonesia to support sending photos to Twitter via MMS by incorporating TwitPic. Give it a try today on your 3 Indonesia phone by sending "START" to 89887.

Indonesia is one of a handful of count ries, sole representative of Asia, supporting SMS to Twitter service.

Statistics on usage would be interesting.

This service is designed to tempt existing users into mobile as the service is cumbersome and inflexible compared to user experience of third party apps used by existing mobile Twitterers on high-end devices/smartphones.

The deal is also noteworthy as an example of Twitter working with mobile operators as it continues to investigate ways of monetising the service.