Telstra first to bring Facebook ’social SMS’ service to Australia
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On the eve of a new decade where technology trends and social media use is in the news every day, there’s no doubt that social media’s popularity is exploding among Aussies across the country.
And the statistics speak louder than words.
According to recent analysis undertaken by online measurement company Nielsen*, Facebook now accounts for 29% of all time spent online by Australians. Additionally, in October alone we uploaded a whopping 80 million pictures, wrote 32 million ‘wall posts’ and posted 45 million status updates.
Clearly, we’re a nation of networkers and this is set to expand even further with today’s launch of our new ‘social SMS’ service.
As a first in Australia, Telstra mobile customers who use Facebook can sign up to the Facebook SMS service and receive free SMS notifications whenever friends update Facebook, including wall posts, comments, invites and messages.
Users can also send a SMS to reply to a notification or create a new SMS to update their profile (charged at the standard SMS rate as per their Telstra mobile plan).
It’s easy to setup the Facebook SMS service. Telstra customers can activate the new SMS notifications service by texting “fb” to 019832665 (0198 FBOOK) for the cost of a standard SMS. More information about SMS alerts from Facebook is available at: www.facebook.com/mobile.
For more details you can take a look at our media release.
Lastly, in exciting news we’re looking to expand this service further with another social media provider, so stay tuned for further developments in this space.
* Source: Nielsen
Congrats to all involved.. what a great service for those who don’t have “push notifications” or email capable mobiles.
I love it… and its free
Good work!! About time this feature was released!!
nice one. setup and running in 30 secs
Bring on Twitter Support
Sure, this is a start to something great! but why not just make things simple..keep facebook as a “web” feature rather than txt notifications. I for one, find getting email and txts every minute quiet annoying!
Is it not possible to have Facebook Mobile (m.facebook.com) as “Free to Browse”. This would make T customers very happy…The good thing about m.facebook is the small data that is used per page as the actual website viewed on the mobile is “compacted”, therefore it wouldn’t strain and congest the Next G Network. Of coarse you would have this governed by a Fair Play Policy and BINGO, what do we have here!
(If at the end of the day, it cant be free, what about a Social Media Pass or Subscription that has a $5 monthly fee. I would much rather pay $5 a month for unlimited facebook, [myspace or twitter] through an app than 25c per txt i send.)
The thing is other carriers offer this…what could Telstra do better!
[Advertising]…which carrier allows you to check your facebook and let family and friends know “that ive stopped for a long deserved break half way through the Nullarbor” – A network that works better in more places
Call your mum (this is a new age) hit her up on Facebook!
my 2cents worth
My advice , as always concerning great new innovative Technology in communication and social networks is Security. Everywhere, even offline keep an eye on what personal details you share to strangers, on the phone for example, or at your front door. Use your common sense giving any personal data whatsoever.
What is socially fun for one, is an identity and the ability to suck that identity for all it’s worth from the innocent for malicious intent.
Aside frrom that, nice idea for a new service Telstra !
Everyone has their favorite way of using the internet. Many of us search to find what we want, click in to a specific website, read what’s available and click out. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because it’s efficient. We learn to tune out things we don’t need and go straight for what’s essential.
I originally thought this would be a great idea – however since I have an iPhone and have internet on my iPhone. I was wondering would it be cheaper to text updates or just use the internet and post an update. Any comments on this?
Natalie: It depends on your data plan and text plan. Texts to 0198FBOOK come out of your plan’s text quota, so if you don’t use all them up (like me) it doesn’t cost anything.