Twitter is the largest mobile social network service in the world. Members use their mobile phone or the web to communicate with simple text messages of 140 characters or less. Primarily used to keep in touch with friends, family and coworkers, Twitter is quickly being taken up by celebrities, politicians, organizations and leading media companies to communicate with their "followers."
Ericsson IPX supports Twitter.com with SMS messaging globally and is also launching a new tracking service, which allows users around the world to distribute status updates to their friends that include key words or topics. The tracking service also enables them to find fellow Twitter users with similar interests.
Scott Nichols, director, IPX North America, says: "We won the Twitter business because of our global footprint and robust solution. Ericsson IPX is one of the world's largest SMS aggregators and immediately provides Twitter with the ability to distribute messages to most mobile phones worldwide utilizing our extensive network of mobile operator connections. We were also able to quickly address service issues that our competitors could not, which set us apart."
Ericsson contacted Twitter, founded partly by the same team as the successful Blogger.com, last year in the very early stages of the services based on a lead generated by Johan Myrberger at Business Unit Multimedia in Sweden.
Fredrik Ruben, head of Sales, IPX North America, says: "We were able to have a reasonably long dialog and help them resolve some problems. We were the only company that could help with both local and global connectivity."
Currently, Twitter sends several million SMS messages a week using Ericsson IPX.
"Twitter is driving profitable traffic for Ericsson," Ruben says. "They also fit the profile of innovation and market leadership that Ericsson ideally wants to have from its customers.
"Twitter generates traffic in the network in tremendous volumes and is a working example of the new services convergence between web and mobile phone. From a business perspective, it is an honor to work with Twitter."
