Toluu

Mark Evans

Insight and Analysis from North of the Border

No Twitter SMS for You, Canada!November 27

Twitter’s troubles with SMS - otherwise known as its a huge expense that it can’t really afford - have now seen it eliminate outbound SMS message for users in Canada.

The move comes a few months after Twitter was forced to shut down SMS service for U.K. customers.

It’s comes down to simple economics: it costs Twitter too much money, which is a challenge for a company that generates no revenue.

“We can’t afford to support this service given our current arrangement with our providers (where costs have been doubling for the past several months.) As a result, effective today we are no longer delivering outbound SMS over our Canadian shortcode (21212).”

For Canadians, it means they can send Tweets via SMS but can’t receive any Tweets using SMS. Of course, there are lots of cool tools out there to use Twitter on mobile devices without having to resort to SMS.

The sad part is Twitter’s move is yet another illustration how Canada is becoming a digital peasant. With carriers more intent on squeezing customers for revenue (aka ARPU) than providing innovative, new services, Canadians end up looking at the raging party going on without being able to participate.

Of course, it would also help if we had access to online services such as Hulu and Pandora but that doesn’t appear to be happening any time soon.

Twitter held out hope it can revive SM

Who’s the Right Buyer for Twitter?November 24

Regular Geek asked a good question: what is the right price for Twitter in wake of Facebook’s reported $500-million offer for the world’s leading microblogging service.

A different - and perhaps better - question is who’s right buyer. For whatever reason, Facebook doesn’t seem like right choice to carry the Twitter to the next level. My fear is once Twitter is within the Facebook fold, whatever je-ne-sais-quoi it had will disappear to the point where Twitter will stop being Twitter.

But the reality is Twitter’s in play. It’s entertaining offers, and waiting for the right deal to come along.

Putting aside price, which the market will determine, who’s the best buyer?

Is is Google, which already has Jaiku, although it doesn’t appear to have done much with Jaiku since it was acquired?

Is it Microsoft, which missed the blogging boat but wants to be a major player in social media?

Is it News Corp.? Rupert Murdoch scored with MySpace so why not take a shot at Twitter?

What about an unorthodox choice, the New York Times, which needs something dramatic to jump-start its online operations?

Who do you think is the best buyer for Twitter.

Technorati Tags: go

Some More GMail GoodnessNovember 20

Of all the goodies that Google has rolled out over the few years, you could make a strong argument that GMail has done better and had more of an impact than anything else to come out of the Googleplex.

After hitting the online e-mail scene at a time when Yahoo and Hotmail were well established, GMail has become one of the leading services, and led the way in pushing forward the envelope. Most notably was the decision right out of the gate to offer far more storage space than Yahoo or Hotmail.

GMail rolled out piece of goodness today with the introduction of themes and colors so you can “pimp” your account in a wide variety of ways. In the scheme of things, themes are a relatively minor feature but it’s just another example of how Google has done such a nice job at making GMail better. The new themes come in the wake of GMail unveiling voice and video chat earlier this month.

What’s interesting is that Google’s nurturing of GMail stands in contrasts

mesh ‘09 Now on SaleNovember 18

Since mesh was started three years ago, we’ve been focused on being more organized - not always an easy thing when you have five people involved who have other things on their plates such as day jobs and families.
So, we’re excited to take a major organizational step forward by putting tickets for the mesh ‘09 conference on sale today. mesh is happening April 7 to 8, 2008 at the MaRS Collaboration Centre. Tickets are $469 (plus the evil GST). There are also 30 tickets available for students for $50 a piece.

We’ve really been encouraged by how excited people are about mesh ‘09, as well as the great support from our sponsors, whose support for mesh is invaluable.

We’re in the midst of putting together programming for mesh. If you’ve got people you’d like to see or ideas for panels and workshops, let us know.

As well, tickets for

Would Anyone Miss the Yellow Pages?November 17

It seems kind of strange to see a feature story in the Wall St. Journal entitled “Extinction Threatens Yellow-Pages Publishers”.

By strange, I mean that it’s not really a story for anyone who actively uses the Web. When was the last time you looked something up in the yellow or white pages? I would hazard to guess the answer is you can’t remember.

In my house, the Yellow Pages don’t even make it past the front porch. As soon as they’re delivered, they’re immediately thrown in the recycling bin. If I could figure out a way to stop them from being delivered, I’d gladly do it.

Of course, this new reality is terrible news for companies that publish the Yellow Pages given they’ve been high-margin entities for decades. For example, Yellow Pages Income Fund made an impressive $408.7-million on sales of $1.27-billion over the first nine months of 2008, giving its profit margins of about 33%.

Not surprisingly,Yellow Page publishers see the writing on the wall so they’ve been scrambling to embrace the Web. But like newspaper publishers, the Web is nowhere near as lucrative as paper.