Some SMS Perspective
On Wednesday, we announced that Twitter has suspended outgoing SMS to our UK number. The blue in the chart above illustrates the percent of outgoing SMS we stopped sending. 2% of our user base consumed 4% of our outbound SMS over the UK number at a price …
Context & Ripple Effects
Twitter’s UK SMS restriction follows its August 13 changes for affected SMS users. The company’s data identifies a concentrated cost problem: 2% of users accounted for 4% of outbound messages sent through the UK number.
The episode puts a constraint on an access channel that had helped make Twitter usable from ordinary mobile phones, while Twitter was also addressing spam and recurring service reliability problems.
First-order effects
- UK-number users lose Twitter’s outgoing SMS delivery, with the heaviest users bearing the immediate change.
- Twitter reduces outbound SMS volume on its UK number and targets a segment consuming a disproportionate share of those messages.
Second-order effects
- Twitter must steer UK users toward less costly ways to receive updates or accept lower message delivery for the affected segment.
- The cutoff makes carrier-message pricing and usage concentration operational limits on Twitter’s growth through mobile alerts.
Third-order effects
- If high-volume SMS use repeatedly outpaces its economics, services such as Twitter will have to treat carrier messaging as a constrained distribution channel rather than a universally scalable default.
The trend: Consumer internet services are learning that mobile reach through carrier SMS depends as much on unit economics and abuse controls as on user demand.