Twitter’s always had a mixed story when it came to SMS, and overall the emergence of mobile apps have made Twitter-to-SMS posting a non-issue for many users.
But what about Twitter-to-MMS links? As services like Twitpic have emerged to let Twitter users attach photos to Twitter messages, they’ve been positioned more as competitors to already slow-to-take off MMS services than anything.
But European operator Orange is trying to change that, announcing a deal with Twitter to explicitly support SMS-to-Twitter updates, as well as enabling Twitter photo sharing via its MMS service.
For existing Orange SMS users, texting to Twitter is available at no extra cost. The MMS play is interesting, because clipping a photo to a Twitter post via Twitpic has the potential to strongly compete with carrier MMS services.
Orange’s deal represents good strategic thinking to not only cut deals with a partner like Twitter but to think creatively about how to have its own services ride the Twitter popularity wave as well.
Orange claims its the first operator to enable the Twitter-to-MMS hookup.
Specifically, Orange lets customers post their photos on ‘Snapshot’, a site developed by Orange UK. As part of the deal, Twitter will also join Facebook, MySpace and Bebo on Social Life, Orange’s social media aggregator portal.
