Twitter SMS Arrives in India via Airtel

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If you are in India and an Airtel customer, the good news is that you can now send updates to your Twitter account from the mobile phone itself via SMS.

To get started, send an SMS message from the Airtel Mobile Phone to 53000 with “Signup” (if you are never used Twitter) or “Start” (if you already have an account on Twitter). The other option is that you can directly open the Twitter Devices page on twitter.com and link your  mobile phone number with your Twitter ID online (see video below).

You can then send an SMS text message to the 53000 number and it will post directly to your Twitter profile, and will be visible in the timeline of all your Twitter followers. Here’s an official list of all Twitter text commands that you can send from a mobile phone to interact with your Twitter stream.

If you are not using an Airtel connection, there’s no reason to worry as the Twitter-Airtel deal is not exclusive and will probably end after a month. Here’s the official word:

Twitter will be available in India on SMS only on the Airtel network. There is exclusivity for the same for 4 weeks, in which only Airtel consumers will be able to use the service on SMS across the nation. This period of exclusivity is something that we want to take advantage of and make sure that Brand Airtel can own the property Twitter in consumer mind space.

You save money because you don’t have to send an international SMS for using Twitter but the service is still expensive. Twitter doesn’t charge anything for sending updates but you’ll have to pay a buck to Airtel for every tweet that you send from the phone. To stop getting Twitter updates on your mobile phone, just send OFF, STOP, or QUIT command from your mobile phone to 53000 or use “ON” to start again.

Video: How to use Twitter on a mobile phone