It is too bad SMS has been discontinued for one reason – it’s nice having direct message SMS support for twitter (is this gone in UK as well?), but if I’m running SMS updates for someone chances are I actually have their mobile phone number and they have mine. However, outside of direct messages, I know very few people who have continued using twitter tracking regular tweets from those they follow, especially if they follow more than a few people. But doesn’t this create an opportunity in the UK to speed up the progression toward mobile web, downloadable app, email and mobile IM updates? My favorite of these services, even with all the new apps is still http://hahlo.com for instance.

I would also think this would help wean the UK off of SMS in general so that they demand reasonable unlimited data plans and speed up an awareness that there’s a huge feature gap between mobile users that have unlimited data plans and those who don’t. I feel like we need the SMS feature in the US more than anywhere else mainly because it’s a crutch until the vast majority of people here are introduced to their mobile phone browser.