One of India’s popular mobile service provider, Bharti Airtel and Twitter have joined hands in a first-of-its-kind partnership, which would allow Airtel mobile customers to access Twitter services for free. They have limited the offer for a period of 90 days, that is till 1 March 2012.
Interestingly, Airtel users will be able to access http://mobile.twitter.com for free on their phones, even without a registered GPRS subscription from Airtel. For Airtel’s Twitter SMS service, a customer will have to use the shortcode, 53000, so that they receive fast updates without logging on.
This service will even help users in creating a new Twitter account via SMS. Apart from account creation, users will be allowed to even follow specific users via SMS. If an existing Twitter user tries to view their timeline, to find and follow accounts, post new Tweets, to reply to other users and retweet their Tweets, it will be possible to do so via mobile.twitter.com.
N Rajaram, Chief Marketing Officer – Consumer Business, Bharti Airtel spoke at the launch of the limited period service, which is noted as below:
“Today’s discerning Indian customer is increasingly relying on the mobile device for accessing everything from emails to music to social networks. In conjunction with this trend, we are pleased to introduce 90 days of free access to Twitter for mobile users in India — first on Airtel. With this, 170 million+ Airtel mobile customers will now potentially be able to enjoy Twitter’s rich interface on their mobile web browsers or access updates posted by specific users through SMS notifications free of charge.”
“This initiative will introduce new users to an exciting world of possibilities that mobile internet enables, thus providing an impetus to data services market. Airtel has always been committed to delivering experiences that are innovative and relevant for customers. This launch reinforces our focus on this promise and adds to our list of many industry firsts.”
To create an account, a user has to SMS ‘START’ to 53000, upon receiving reply – SMS ‘SIGNUP’ to 53000. the next step would be simple enough as they have to type a username (unique and less than 15 characters) and send that to 53000.
Twitter co-Founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey even spoke at the AsiaD Conference this week, said that the micro-blogging giant is looking to tie-up with telecom operators to enable people to use Twitter for free. He noted, “It will be kicking off pretty soon”. Dorsey however made it clear that they are trying to draft out a pattern of it and would be looking forward to replicate with other telecom operators as well.
A similar tie-up has been seen earlier in India, when the company tied up with telecom operators like Reliance Communications, striking a deal to offer access to Facebook for free.
However, this isn’t the first time Airtel has partnered Twitter. They have teamed up earlier as Airtel was the first telecom operator to get Twitter on SMS.
To know more, visit www.airtel.in/twitter.