Trust Tommy

Twitter has announced that it is dropping the receiving SMS feature that IMO made it great. And since then, the blogosphere has literally exploded by being inundated with posts about the move.

It's doing " the responsible thing" this morning, by shutting down it's imcoming SMSs to mobile twitter users outside the US, Canada and India.

In fairness, it's also promised to negotiate with local mobile tariffs to ensure cheaper sending-of-SMSs to the UK number.

I read through the list of comments on the (badly named) GetSatasfaction forum and one jumed out at me

So, basically. give us specifics. WHEN do you plan to have IM back? WHEN do you plan to negotiate with the carriers in each country? What STAGE are these negoations at? How can WE help (eg, ringing up tech support and asking for these services)? WHEN will IM be likely to be coming back? Is it actually DEAD forever?

I too would like some idea of a timeline, knowing when each of the things is at least likely to make a return. I also for one herald the slightest bit of hope that there'll be an Irish twitter number to text, as I have free calls to any network. I fear, however, that:

Before we go into more detail, here's the good news. Twitter will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months. These new numbers will make Twittering more accessible for all the folks who have been using SMS to send long-distance updates through our UK number.

is just to be able to have the heading of "some good news, and some bad"

The other comments are mixed, ranging from people saying how twitter have just turned their back on loyal twitterers and given them a royal kick in the nuts, to more level headed folk trying to show how twitter was always a free service for people, and there was never any obligation.

My view? I think that yeah, twitter just got 90% less useful for me.