Twe2 Brings World’s Mobile Users Back to Twitter

When Twitter announced that it would be scaling back it’s SMS services for people outside of North America and Europe, it was a huge blow. Given that Twitter is only made up of about 8 million users (6 million if you don’t count the dead profiles and spammers), to Twitter it must have seemed rather silly to keep incurring huge costs that the user base in foreign countries could never hope to offset, at least not with the companies current business model (re: none).

However, in yet another case of someone demonstrating ways they intend to make money off of Twitter where the company itself can’t or won’t, Twe2.com sends Tweets to mobile devices, which will then be followed by short ads which follow each SMS. Of course, some users will gawk at this model. Who the heck wants an SMS AD!?!? The ones that find their way through these days are annoying enough as it is. Much less if you’re heavy Twitter user.

But here’s their strength. For the time being, there’s no other option for people who want to use Twitter SMS. In short, Twe2 has us tweeps who live in countries that don’t end with the America by the cojones and so we have to pay attention.

Even more interesting is the fact that Twitter has ‘whitelisted’ Twe2 to proof it’s concept using their platform and to even develop with the companies much coveted oATH integration. Could it be that Twitter’s business model will revolve around formulating deals with developers that leverage their API? Only time will tell, but the fact that this will at least part of their idea for monetizing the service seem inevitable.