Twe2: Free Twitter SMS Updates For Europe and the Rest of the World
In August 2008, Twitter killed SMS updates for everybody outside of the U.S., Canada, and India. Users in the U.K. can now only send messages from their phones, but can't receive them anymore. The developers of Twe2 got frustrated by this and decided to take matters into their own hands. Thanks to Twe2's free service, you can now receive Twitter messages on your mobile phone close to anywhere in the world.
Features
By default, Twe2 will send you an SMS whenever you receive a direct message or a reply. In order to finance this service, Twe2 appends a short ad to all of its SMS messages.
Twe2, whose developers are also responsible for the popular FriendDeck app, has added a number of interesting features to its service that Twitter itself never offered. You can, for example, use the service to receive a message whenever a certain keyword appears in your stream, and you can even use relatively complex search queries.
In order to keep your Twitter SMS stream manageable, Twe2 lets you set the notification frequency (up to 100 messages per hour), and you can also specify if you only want Twe2 to send you messages at specific times during the day or only on certain days of the week.
Thanks to these features, Twe2 is even an interesting service for those of us who live in countries where Twitter's own SMS service is still available. Twe2 also promises that users in the U.S. will get a few extra features in order to distinguish the service from Twitter's own SMS updates.
One problem with Twe2, however, is that the service doesn't have access to Twitter's firehose feed, so that it can often take a while before it notices a new message and forwards it to you.
OAuth Coming Soon
Twe2 was approved by Twitter to test the company's forthcoming support oAuth, though this is not available yet. For now, you still have to provide Twe2 with your Twitter login and password.
Find Us on Twitter
If you'd like to befriend the ReadWriteWeb staff on Twitter here are our accounts - we'd love to meet you too!
Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Twe2.com is powered by Wadja.com
This is a big news for all Twitter users outside the U.S. I just set my Twe2 account up. Now I am waiting for DM/replies to make sure it is working :)
Tried Twe2 service out. DM took 2 minutes to deliver (in the Czech Republic) which is very good imho :) The little ad doesn't bother.
Posted by: Jan Horna
|
February 16, 2009 12:57 PM
I tried this out but they appear to be having trouble getting SMS to Vodafone Australia, I'm yet to receive a single message.
Apparently, the twe2.com is having a Runtime Error in its aspx code right this instant.
Screen shot: http://nawadarat.com/dl/twe2.jpg
Cheers
@peter - took a while for me to get the first message as well - I think their servers are getting slammed by new users right now
Posted by: Frederic
|
February 16, 2009 4:01 PM
Cool service. I will give it a try once oauth gets up and running.
Posted by: Mitch
|
February 16, 2009 4:07 PM
yep - with oauth this would be even better
Posted by: Frederic
|
February 16, 2009 4:08 PM
waiting for a code ... passing the 10 minute mark ,,
Posted by: johnpiercy
|
February 16, 2009 4:11 PM
strange - I got mine within seconds earlier today
Posted by: Frederic
|
February 16, 2009 4:11 PM
This is a great news! I've been looking for ways on how to receive my Twitter updates even if I'm offline and poof! Here it is.
Which SMS or messaging aggregator are they using to achieve this?
Any one has an idea?
Thanks
I can not receive any update from twe2.
- I'm from Vietnam
- set to allow all the time (00:00 to 23:59)
- confirmed number (very quick)
- test with a test DM
nothing happen :((
Works in Canada, eh!
If it's any consolation, you can still send updates in Australia via SMS using getchime.com
It's free!