UPDATE 10: Current startups include TweetSMS, Zygotweet, Twitmobile, Twittex, HootSMS, 3jam, Tweeteroo and TwitSMS.

UPDATE 9: Two workarounds suggested

UPDATE 8: Avatar campaign now under way. Now available for  the following mobile operators: 3 (http://www.tw3t.com/f/25l); O2: http://www.tw3t.com/f/25m; Orange: http://www.tw3t.com/f/25g; T-Mobile: www.tw3t.com/f/25o; Virgin Mobile (http://www.tw3t.com/f/25n); and Vodafone: http://www.tw3t.com/f/25k. Generic image also created by dear2world

UPDATE 7: Nathan Monk is suggesting a campaign of sending ‘boo’ tweets to Twitter founder Biz Stone

UPDATE 6: Journalism.co.uk reports on the impact on many newspapers’ plans

UPDATE 5: Interview about TweetSMS at ArabCrunch.

UPDATE 4: Also filling that gap are Zygotweet.com - also recommended is Jaiku.

UPDATE 3: Also from the Facebook group wall: Some are calling for a ‘Twitter strike’ on August 18

UPDATE 2: That gap in the market has already been spotted: TweetSMS.com (also on Twitter) offers to deliver text messages “for a low price”. On the Facebook group Wall Bullying.co.uk (also on Twitter) notes of Twitter’s official statement: “the prices they are getting charged are way over the odds: on the volume they are hitting it could be as low as 0.3 – 0.5p a text.”

UPDATE: Nicolas Gosset has set up a group to campaign in France

So Twitter has cancelled SMS updates for users outside of the US, Canada and India, apparently because it has been unable to arrange decent billing deals with mobile operators outside of those countries.

So I’ve set up a Facebook group in the UK to put some pressure on mobile operators to cut a deal, fast. It’s in their interests, after all – how many of us started to use text messaging more often because of Twitter? And how many of us are now going to stop?

Hope you can join and add to the numbers (even if you’re not in the UK). Also, if you’re not in the UK, please set up a group for your own country, let me know about it, and we can build a network of these.

PHP Freelancer

Here’s the good news for mobile phone websites: Vodafone has “seen a 50% rise in revenues from its data services over the past quarter, after the number of its customers using the web from mobile devices more than doubled.”

UK newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror will be particularly pleased, having “begun developing a mobile phone website for 12 of its regional newspaper titles.” in partnership with Nokia. So will AP, whose Mobile News Network is “used consistently throughout the day and even across weekends and weekdays … the typical unique user is logging in for seven visits a month.”

The bad news? The day before that Trinity Mirror announcement saw the release of a study that, while including encouraging news for print advertising (it receives more positive responses from British consumers than those in other media platforms) found “consumers resist forms of advertising that are intrusive, especially those intrusive on “private space,” media such as spam, telemarketing and…” And? “mobile ads”. Add to that the findings from a recent Nielsen report (PDF) that only 14% of US mobile web users say they don’t mind relevant mobile advertising.

Ah well, the advertisers are planning to buy it anyway.

PHP Freelancer