Twitter buys SMS startup Cloudhopper

Not giving up on text messaging just yet

26 April 2010 11:24 GMT / By Duncan Geere

Twitter has announced that it's acquiring a messaging infrastructure company called Cloudhopper, signifying that it's not ready to give up on its humble SMS beginnings just yet.

The company originally implemented the 140-character limit so that any tweet (plus a username) would be able to fit within a single 160-character SMS. However, in recent years, most people have begun using smartphone data networks to access the service instead of the SMS networks.

Despite this, some still use the SMS functionality, and Twitter's been using Cloudhopper to serve those tweets to mobile networks in North America, Europe and Africa. As part of the acquisition, two members of Cloudhopper - Joe Lauer and Kristin Kanaar - will be joining Twitter's mobile team.

Twitter told Techcrunch that the acquisition will mean some (rather unspecific) "deeper, more innovative SMS integration around the world". Excellent.

Via: blog.twitter.com

Full tags

Software, Online, SMS, Twitter, Cloudhopper, Mergers