Twe2 brings Twitter SMS alerts back to UK

Get @Replies and DMs to your inbox for free

6 March 2009 10:14 GMT / By Verity Burns

UK users of micro-blogging site Twitter will now once again be able to receive free Twitter SMS alerts informing them of @Replies and direct messages free of charge.

Twitter users in the US, Canada and India have had this functionality for a while, but it was taken away from UK users last year after it proved too pricey.

Now a company called Twe2 is taking up the baton for UK users by providing the service at no cost. Up to 100 messages can be sent to a user every hour, which certainly tops the 250 messages a week cap Twitter enforced, and you can opt to receive just @Replies, just DMs or both.

You can also choose what days and times you'd like to receive messages.

Of course nothing comes for free, and to provide the service at no cost, you know advertising has to come in somewhere. And it does.

Twe2 is powered by a service called Wadja that means your tweets will come with a "contextual" ad at the end of your message. This means it picks keywords from the tweet and adds on relevant ads at the end, similar to ads on Gmail.

Of course to take advantage of the service, you'll have to give Twe2 your Twitter username and password, and it won't keep you up to date with general tweets from friends, but for free we can't really knock it.

Head over to the Twe2 website to sign up for the service.