Twitter kills SMS service in some countries over costs. Will someone kill SMS already?

venturebeat.com

4 points·qhoxie··5 comments

That's a big lesson for small-scale mobile-based start-ups: Whatever you do in this space, you must start with a sustainable business model.

In my previous start-up we ignored that fact, and we failed. Unfortunately, the mobile space is not as "free" as the Internet. Especially here in the US, we basically have an oligopoly, so don't think you can just build something and "put it out there"... Everything you do will have a cost, and someone will have to eat that -- Either you or your customer.

Carriers are making heaps of cash from SMS, no way its going to die soon

You're right, they don't want that cash cow leaving anytime soon. But when iPhone gets their act together and allow for background applications, it will be a death knell.

Even now, some of my friends will "ping" me with SMS and then we will switch over to GTalk to save our monthly messages, especially if we plan on having an extended convo.

Carriers will do everything they can to get your money have a read: http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/13/google-ally-t-mobile-looks...

They will block apps in a heart beat that will deliver a cheaper way to pass massages.

Please remember that you (bparter) are the minority when talking about SMS

Maybe this is why Yahoo Messenger is not on the iPhone? A full iPhone implementation of YMessenger with the push notification would have the exact same functionality as SMS and more. You don't even need background processes for this!

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