SAN FRANCISCO, April 28 — Twitter is officially discontinuing the ability of users to participate on the platform via SMS text messages.
When Twitter was first created about 15 years ago, tweets were created via text message, which is why the original character count limit for posts was 140.
People used to be able send and receive new tweets through their phone’s SMS service; however, the former option has been largely unavailable to most of the platform’s users since last September, a change that didn’t affect many users considering that most have transitioned to using the Twitter app or website to send and read tweets. It was recently reported, though, that all SMS-based Twitter actions — both the sending and receiving of tweets — have been discontinued completely.
This ability started being phased out last year when people found Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's phone number and used it to send inappropriate tweets to the platform. This hack led to the creation of tweets from text messages being disabled for everyone except just a handful of locations; despite this change, users could still opt to receive the text of new tweets to their phones via SMS. Now, all SMS-related activity is officially disabled.
Unfortunately, people and businesses who used the SMS feature to alert their customers to new deals or promotions will have to find a new way to do so.
In any case, this decision brings the days of the original platform to an end, ultimately forcing all its users to use either the app or the website. — AFP-Relaxnews
