the goose

Right, so O2 have started offering Twitter from your mobile phone over SMS.

Now who do I know that does that?  Oh yeah – me.  So is this good news or bad news?   Well, the good news is that it means more people are using Twitter although I’m still detecting a slow down in the number of Irish Twitter sign ups.  

So lets compare and contrast.  I’ll be unbiased I swear.

Usability

o2:  Text START to 51210 and you’ll receive prompts to get going.  Pretty easy.  The trick is, you need to be an o2 customer.  I’ll knock off a star because it doesn’t help you if you are with one of the other operators.

★★★★

agtweet:

Go to agtweet.com and register your number.  Then start sending texts to one of two numbers  Not quiet as easy.  You also need to either pay online or text agtweet to 57030.

★★

Pricing:

o2:  Receiving replies is FREE (whoot) and updating your account is charged at the regular rate.  Pretty good.  You can’t really argue with that.

★★★★

Agtweet:  In some cases Agtweet it FREE to update your status.  For example, if you are a meteor customer on the right plan you can use our Meteor number.  Some 087 customers can do something similar but it all depends on your plan.  Other than that – regular text rates apply.  Replies are from 4.5c to 25c.  Hmm.  Well, I guess it can still be better value if you are willing and able to sign up with a credit card.

★★

Irishness:

Lets face it, o2 isn’t that Irish.  In fact, its Spanish the last time I checked.  Oh dear.  Doesn’t look like they’ll be scoring too well in this round.

★

Agtweet:  Holy god – Agtweet is Irish to beat the band.  Look at that green branding, there is even a little Gaelge on the front page.

★★★★★★★

Well who knew – its a draw.  I guess it is a question of time before all the operators have some kind of Twitter service.  There are still other niches to compete on of course.  You can help people by allowing multiple people to update the same account etc.