Confirmed: Twitter Kills Off SMS Notifications & Posting In Most Countries And Deletes SMS Followers Without Providing Any Warning

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Update, 4/27: Twitter has now officially announced that they are killing off SMS in most countries. The Verge covers the story as well.

View alternate options for receiving DansDeals alerts here. We are currently looking into other options for SMS alerts.

 


Originally posted on 4/25:

On Thursday evening, Twitter killed their Twitter for SMS option without providing any advance warning.

For more than 11 years, thousands of DansDeals readers have been getting SMS alerts of new deals via the service.

In fact the @DansDeals Twitter follower count fell from about 97,000 to below 89,000 as Twitter apparently removed the followers who signed up for DansDeals SMS alerts via their fast-follow SMS service that didn’t require a full Twitter account.

There are other options to get alerts, but those options require a smartphone. Twitter appears to be writing off non-smartphone users and users that just don’t want another app on their phones.

Several DansDeals readers complained to Twitter and Twitter confirmed that they discontinued the service in most countries (Click to enlarge):

 

Twitter claims that the service was discontinued due to service vulnerabilities, presumably trying to stop from cell phone spoofers and hijackers from posting Tweets that aren’t from the account owner.

Of course if that’s a major problem, then offering 2FA logins and password verification via cell phone wouldn’t make much sense either.

They also could have continued to allow SMS notifications to be received, without the ability to actually post Tweets via Twitter for SMS.

I’d guess that this is a cost-cutting move, as it’s much cheaper to offer push notifications from their app than it is to send out SMS.

Twitter can of course do what it wants, but the most egregious part of this is that they offered no warning that the service would be discontinued. That leaves websites like this one left without the ability to find alternate solutions for readers that were counting on the service.

If you were using Twitter for SMS to receive notifications from DansDeals, please see this post for alternate options, including Twitter app notifications, Telegram app notifications, and desktop or mobile browser notifications.

Did you count on Twitter SMS notifications? 

Please spread the word to friends and family that they can download the Twitter App and enable push notifications as explained in this post, in order to keep notifications of great deals!

HT: TexasTotty

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211 Comments On "Confirmed: Twitter Kills Off SMS Notifications & Posting In Most Countries And Deletes SMS Followers Without Providing Any Warning"

All opinions expressed below are user generated and the opinions aren’t provided, reviewed or endorsed by any advertiser or DansDeals.

Chaim

Downloaded Telegram

YH

How does that help non smartphone users?

NM

Telegram has PC and Web Apps. you no need a smartphone.

Sol

Telegram is the best app out there anyway

Moe

Other than less than 5% of contacts actually use it.

Hungry Hippo

Big statement. Any reason why?

Shaul Yaakov Morrison

I assume they want people using the app to see sponsored content.

Etan G

Receiving your SMS Notifications was great with an immediate viewing. If I wanted more info I’d just click the link. Some of your posts are extremely time sensitive and every second counts. Now the few times a day I check the Twitter app I may miss great deals, may have to scroll down a considerably long way to see DD in my feed. It’s quite annoying

AAA

Dan, can you continue posting your deals on WhatsApp. I was following it for a while, then I got a message that it was being changed, but it suddenly stopped.
Thanks in advance.

Myi

For the same price, why not follow fee Twitter or push notifications?

aron

Pls start a petition that Twitter should reactivate sms mobile notifications there is hundreds of thousands of ppl without 24 7 online access so pls start a petition
Thanks a million

Redgoldfish

Can you set up a WhatsApp deals notification group?

Shlomo

My wife got harassed by different numbers when she was on the group.

Moe

Why’d they harass her but not you?

yk

since a few countries still receive sms from twitter, will it help if i change my country by Data and permissions settings on twitter?

Fred

Wow wow wow. This petition is now going viral, within a few short minutes they have already almost reached their initial 1000 signature goal. Dan, please post!!

D

Set up ifttt

Sam

Have an online account with my phone number verified still no sms

( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)

Can you do WhatsApp broadcast or WhatsApp status?

55

use Remind.com

Sharlene

Yep, I’ve used that system and it work great. Dan, give it a look!

Elli

I was wondering why i stopped getting messages from you!

Test

Would you please do a TEST
All my settings seem to be correct on Twitter app and my phone but didn’t get anything recently.

WhatsApp broadcast

I believe you are able to broadcast unlimited messages to many different WhatsApp numbers through the use of several 3rd party apps such as whatstools.

AAA

And then get shutdown by Whatsapp, like other’s did.

WhatsApp broadcast

Just make a business account. Worth a try.
Why would WhatsApp shut it down, what do they stand to lose?

correct me if I\'m wrong

“They also could have continued to allow SMS notifications to be received, without the ability to actually post Tweets via Twitter for SMS.”

Twitter had disallowed POSTING tweets via SMS quite a few months ago.

dave

just create your own sms subscription and have users subscribe.

Redgoldfish

Excellent idea!

Ari

how about using email to sms? a developer should be able to automate it:

to sign up: a user sends a text to a service such as google voice, an application then takes that number and does a lookup for which service it uses, adds the number as an email https://www.dialmycalls.com/blog/send-text-messages-email-address and then sends out notifications to those emails.

Texas Totty

No response back from Twitter yet, BTW.
Do I get a HT for that email 🙂 ?

Texas Totty

Thank you. Am I good now even though I may not really qualify?

myi

Yup Your perfect!

( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)

WhatsApp status would be good for people that have a kosher smart phone and don’t have access to twitter/telegram.

cham

whats kosher about whatsapp??

hiii

any way to get an email alert??

DJ

Ifttt app or ifttt.com

bigissy

Just reactivated and got a text saying”Your phone is activated!

Reply HELP to learn more.
Reply OFF to stop receiving notifications.
Std msg&data rates may apply.”

so I hope im good. waiting on the next DansDeals to post to see if it works

Shmobaum

This is what happens when Twitter employees have too much time on their hands due to the circumstances. They work from home so instead of shmoozing with colleagues in the coffee room they come up with these gizairos

YitzyS

Started a petition to Twitter. Sign it here: http://chng.it/PXLddw595z

%

I heard of 2 options
1 a blast from email every phone has a email address which you can respond to from email
2 I have not checked out but heard of a lot are using now remind app

EB

I believe reminds biggest class is 5,000. And not free

whYME

I guess this is kind of a good thing for me. I’ve wanted to quit Twitter a long time ago but DD notifications was pretty much the only thing keeping me, now I can ditch Twitter with no regrets.

Mendy

חזק ואמץ!

Lani Harrison

I did this years ago using RSS and email. There’s a similar site called Zapier. If a follower can get an email when you tweet, they can have their email acct immediately forward that email as an SMS to their phone using something like (phone number) at tmomail dot net. It’s a few steps to set up but then instant once it works.

Lcm

Use this ifttt service
https://ifttt.com/applets/xcHFiVvR-get-an-email-when-there-s-a-new-tweet-from-a-specific-username

with your cell phone number email address as mentioned in earlier comments for a diy fix

Ben

This move really sucks as there are many yeshivah students who made due without a smart phone and now they are put into an even tougher position with this move . Well i cant blame twitter after all it is 2020 but i due feel for everyone out there who will have another decision to rethink as every day it becomes harder to live life without a smart phone especially for all yeshivah students.

shawn

life is so much better without a smartphone

cham

100 percent!!!

Cozmohoot

I have a smart phone but dont need the twitter app and always just used text notifications by sending follow to 40404… this stinks.

M

If you text dansdeals to txt@instatext you can see the last posts and if you text dansdeals5 you will get the last 5 Dansdeals6 the last 6 etc. Up to the last 10 for now this is an option.

Freebie

@dan
I was wondering why I had no messages Motzei Shabbos. Thought there was no news in the world for a change.

What about the remind app. It can go to text message as well and its great

Albert

+1

#Foreverfollower

Dan i think you should start a WhatsApp broadcast. It will be a tremendous success!!!

Moe

Sign up for a new Twitter account using a country that Twitter still supports SMS in.

Wolf

I for one stopped getting the texts a while ago, and since then hasn’t been able to take advantage of any time sensitive deals 🙁 Most shuls have adapted and started using a different service for text alerts.

Moe

How do the Yeshivos and Pirchei groups send SMS notifications whenever they want? Perhaps consider doing what they do.

Moe

How are browser notifications worse than SMS, for our purposes?

El-al

+1 for email notifications

Wolf

I think it’s called remind, it works pretty well.

Michael Levi

https://aws.amazon.com/sns/sms-pricing/

If you’re interested in paying about the stock price for SMS messages from Amazon above, I’d love to help make a very simple system that can do sms messages. Email me if you’re interested.

NS

this is a real bummer for me
no smartphone so even ideas like whatsapp don’t help me =[
it was great being able to get text to my phone was then able to chose to pursue deal or not! huge disappointment on my end for this site and others that i was following as well

aaron

Check these guys out

Unlimited contacts to send to. You don’t pay per contact just for the monthly amout.
https://www.textedly.com/features/

Bob

+1

Yechiel Z

So many yeshivas used twitter to announce various announcements. Including BMG. RJJ Edison. Telshe. So many more.

Ed Travel

I was wondering what had happened…

No filter

You have to love the indignation when a company decides to stop providing a free service that it has no obligation to provide in the first place and no obligation to notify any changes thereto. In terms of “…the most egregious…”, there is nothing “egregious” about any of this other than the phrasing of your announcement.

Freebie

@dan
I searched and found this:
Google+ (33669)

Log in to Google+ and go to settings to add your phone number; enter the verification number they will send to you.

Change your settings and notification settings from the main settings page.

Text messages will send updates just like they do for Facebook and Twitter. Picture messages are not supported via MMS at this time for Google+. Instead you can log into picasaweb.google.com, go to settings and set up a secret email address for your photo uploads.

Foursquare (368266)

To activate Foursquare on your phone you need to go to DotGo and authorize their app to access your Foursquare account.

Once you receive your authorization pin, send an SMS to DOTCOM (368266) with the message “foursquare +pin.” You will then be sent a menu of commands you can use with Foursquare.

Please update if these would work

dave

so what are we to do now if no smartphone?

dave

Is this the end of the era of dansdeals messages for those without smartphones?

shmueli

looking to know the same ? 🙁

volvi mendlowitz

i’m despaired to get again this beloved #DansDeals sms msg’s (also -proud- non smartphone user) ?

volvi mendlowitz

i personally know 100’s of heimishe yiden that are in the same situation and waiting for any immediate solution (in my kollel are learning 90 yingerleit NO 1 with a smartphone & everybody is using sms [“as of now more then half yingerleit are following already #DansDeals since i spread the word..!!”]) we must get dan’s msg’s back! any 1 with a solution should pls act fast, and should know how many frum yiden will appreciate it!

missing something

Am I missing something Can u update the email to your cellphone e g 1234567890@verizon.vtext.com and receive as an email?

cham

twitter dosent send tweetes by email

jojo

Please figure out an option for non-smartphone users, like sending an email to our text. we really count on it

Mick Rich

I’m developing a twitter-like system for Kol Haolam. I would do the same for Dan.
It would cost about $100 a month.

Mikes@Micro.com

Mazel Tov! Looks like your system is live!

admin

For users without a smartphone go to http://www.hocker.me and let them know if you would pay to receive SMS notifications.

The heart wants what it wants

Oh well, and here I was trying and trying to reset the SMS notifications. Guess we’re back to the old fashioned way of people forwarding (or not!) those good links.
Still enjoying my Doc Martens from the $25 deal and really don’t want to let this go, but I’m not going to download their app because they deleted a service I enjoyed.

Chaim

Did you count on Twitter SMS notifications?
******
Yes, I did! 🙁

Yoely

Dan, https://www.rainedout.com/ might be a good alternative.

“SELECTED PLAN Recipient’s Choice
In this plan, the Recipient chooses unlimited messaging via text or email. Receiving unlimited texts from unlimited RainedOut accounts costs $7.30 per year. There is no cost to the sender in this plan. Email is FREE to send and receive.”

In other words, email is free, SMS is $7.30 a year, or you can sign up with your built-in email to SMS every phone number has, for example if you have Verizon then your email to SMS will be your phone number@vtext.com (**********@vtext.com) this way you also get SMS for free

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez

There are paid services that send out text messages to your subscribers at fractions of a penny. Just google it. Yes it sucks to have to pay when you were getting it free through twitter. But if you pay you can have the same exact thing you had before

Haim

Dan, I can help you set up a very (really) cheap and easier alternative PM for details

Lcm

Another DIY solution. Pretty simple. (and free)
(just takes a couple steps to set up only once)

The advantage of this solution over the email to text method:
This way you get the full text of the tweet with the link, not a messy message in email format that can be partially cut off.

Use https://ifttt.com/applets/402189p-twitter-post-to-groupme-group

1. Set up an account
2. You may have to connect your twitter account.
3. You will need to have a Groupme account, connect it.
4. Create a group with only yourself in it.
5. In the Username to Watch box put: DansDeals.
6. From the dropdown menu, choose the group that you made (which you are the only one in it).
(7. In the message box, you can cut out the “(via Twitter {{LinkToTweet}})” part.)

Voila! You will have nice clean text messages with complete links coming!

Texas Totty

Can this be done with multiple twitter accounts?

Lcm

Didn’t try anything other than what I did, and don’t know if I understand your question.

But if I understand correctly, you can set up another applet to get a message when a different account tweets.
You would have to set it up for each account of which you want to receive their feed.

In general, there are a lot of powerful “applets” that you can use and create with twitter and other services there ( iftttt.com ). Take a look around. It’s fairly intuitive.

Ezzy

It’s annoying. All these different IFTTT routines are for single accounts to email or to groupme or something. For a typical yeshiva bochur who could be following say 50 different accounts that’s annoying to set up. If someone can create a routine tying your personal Twitter timeline to email that would be perfect. Than you set up your emails to forward to as a text.

Ezzy

No. All these different IFTTT routines are for single accounts to email or to groupme or something. For a typical yeshiva bochur who could be following say 50 different accounts that’s annoying to set up. If someone can create a routine tying your personal Twitter timeline to email that would be perfect. Than you set up your emails to forward to as a text.

Ezzy

Annoying thing about these are that all the different IFTTT routines are set up for notifications from a single account. For yeshiva bochurim who could be following 50 different accounts that’s annoying to set up. If someone can create a routine tying your personal Twitter timeline to email that would be perfect. Than you set up your emails to forward to as a text.

mordy

Does anyone know if there’s a monthly limit to this service?

Lcm

It doesn’t look like it.
It seems when there are limits, it says so pretty clearly, by the services that it uses, there aren’t any limits mentioned

rabbigreenspan

just set it up and will soon see if it works. The only prob is that image urls will display as images through ifttts system and groupme doesnt support mms through their texting service so those tweets may never be received

Lcm

Not sure I totally understand the issue, but in the past when someone sent a picture on a GroupMe, I would get a link texted to view the message online.
So hopefully all tweets will come through.
BH it has been working beautifully for me so far

r duvid

yes yes yes!!! i was counting on Twitter SMS notifications!

Novo

Can send out email to text **********@vtext.com etc.
People can sign up by sending an email from their message app on their phone so you get the email address linked to their number.
If they switch carriers they’ll have to signup again
Or take a look at google groups

Nighthawk700

Yikes. It just hit me that I hadn’t received notifications of a deal in a while, so I came here to look. *Sigh*. Unfortunately I don’t know if any of the alternate options will work for me. When I’m in my office, no cell phones are allowed. I’ve been using SMS to Google Hangouts (via my Google Fi service), which was okay to have on. Some sites hit the firewall, so I’ll have to see if they fly or not.

telzer13

does email notifications in twiiter than have our email on forwarding mode work?

mordy

I use remind for a different platform and it works great (you get sms notifications). Maybe you can do it… Remind.com

Helen

Am I missing something? If someone with no smartphone gets a text with a link in it, what do they do as they can’t even click into the link right then and there? So for a hot deal do they run to their computers or one at a kiosk because they may not own one? I would think not, and even if yes, it’s not always possible or feasible.

That’s why I don’t get why the SMS loss is such a big deal. If they don’t go running right then and there to a computer then they can wait until they sit down by one and read all the posts they missed. I use the browser notifications on my phone and can immediately click into the post, no need for SMS obviously. And even then I may miss out on hot deals.

Not saying twitter was right for doing this, just don’t get how SMS messages with a links in them sent to non smartphone users was of such high value. My school and camps and the like send plenty texts but never with any links. That’s the type of SMS messages are meant for people with no smartphone.

Raptor

I was thinking the same thing as well.

There are some Hot deals though that can last An hour or so and getting on the deal within 15-20 minutes or even calling someone who does have an internet connection to tell them to score the deal for them would be still possible.

If they have no alert, they have no knowledge of it.

Those HURRY! deals That are gone within a few minutes usually aren’t targeted for them!

Ezzy

Either can go to a computer to go online or can ask someone else to order it for you. But you at least got the alert.

Canadian

Lots of ppl with smartphones do not have twitter

Eli

As it looks this was long time planned by Twitter to cut their budget, probably cause they figure that there isn’t a lot of people needing it in these days when most people are using smartphones and all kind of apps, they did slowly first with stopping some features and stopping sms accounts (maybe to see how people will react) and now they totally stopped this option, the reason they provided doesn’t make any sense as noted in the original post and i guess that there is a way to solve the problem if there is any issue and shutting a service cause of that doesnt make any sense to me.

But why now?? Didnt they find a better time than now in middle of this difficult days?? but maybe that’s exactly what they think, that in these days it will be less media coverage about this move, and i think they was right, a Google search showed lots of reports last summer about Twitter disabling ability to tweet via sms but now I don’t see any reports, i believe there is some but not that much as last summer, also they didnt make any official announcement about this change, it was just in email to customers, it shouldnt make a lot of noise.

Anyhow maybe we need to get our president appeal to them to get this service back to us?.. he will make the job.. Anyone with connections to Jared Kushner??

s p

maybe you can set up a text number alert from dansdeals?

ch

Anyone know which countries can still get SMS texts?

mordy

maybe you can send out email alerts and even people without smartphones can recieve them because they can put in ex: xxxxxxxxxx@vzwpix.com

YM

Can we take a minute to appreciate the fact that there are so many bochurim/yungerleit today that still don’t have smartphones? I think that’s absolutely incredible.

dave

+100

Mark

I have a bunch of smartphones, and always carry at least one iOS and one Android phone … but I still used the text service (for speed). And yes, I also have desktop alerts setup on my macbook, etc.

YM

Wow. Whats the specific benefit of carrying both?

Mark

Can test apps on both common OSes. Also I like to play. 🙂

Chaim

but Twitter has been interested in phasing this feature out for some time now. If people receive tweets over SMS, it can’t display ads to them, so it would much rather have people checking the app.

Havi

This has everything to do with limiting Trump’s reach via Twitter.

AmEx holder

To all the ppl asking for a WhatsApp channel or status posts, forget that, instead use telegram, it’s not owned by Facebook, and it’s better in a million ways, if enough of you guys get on telegram maybe we’ll all be able to drop WhatsApp.

Daniel

Telegram sometimes misses some of the twitter notifications and also sometimes it is several minutes late. Has anyone else experienced the same issues with Telegram?

shivti

This is currently the top post on hacker news..

Mark

I wonder if the carriers had any influence over this decision? I mean, on the Android phone that received my SMS DansDeals alerts, 99+% of my SMSs came from DD or DOC (or various flight deal sites).

Yitz

How about the airline carriers themselves? They’re tired of seeing these deals leak so quickly before they could grab a handle

Moe

Many filters block Telegram but permit WhatsApp (for good reasons). As such for many folks Telegram is a non-starter.

googler

wow, front page of hacker news!!! Crazy dan, you rock. https://news.ycombinator.com/ Your website traffic must have spiked to no end

traveller

I heard that a bunch of twitter groups are starting to use the reminder app that people should be able to follow the group through the reminder group. Why don’t you do the same for dansdeals?
I think everyone will enjoy it. You could also sign up through SMS

Big Dog

the real problem is cost… they probably pay per sms message and its a measurable cost, so rather than say they are trying to cut costs, they make up some issue that doesnt exist….

PH

If you’re conditioned to click on links in SMS messages you receive out of the blue from Twitter, it is trivial for a spammer to forge SMS messages that look like they are from Twitter, but send you to their own Web site. Which could just be advertising, obvious propaganda, fake news, or a page designed to plant malware.

SMS messages from Twitter that are only used for MFA, by contrast, you would expect NOT to receive such a message and not to click on a link if you did not do something that you expected to generate such a message.

It may be problematic for some users of your Web site, but there can be legitimate reasons for companies to do things other than just be evil and inconvenience your business model.

fast

Been using ifttt.com to forward tweets to a groupme that only has my number in the group works just fine with almost no delay. its a bit complicated to figure out how to set up ifttt but play around with it, its well worth it.

OD

but there is a limit to tweets per month?

fast

user lcm posted this a little lower down in this thread
it seems there is no monthly but i cant say for sure

Use https://ifttt.com/applets/402189p-twitter-post-to-groupme-group

1. Set up an account for ifttt.
2. You may have to connect your twitter account.
3. You will need to have a Groupme account, connect it.
4. In groupme Create a group with only yourself in it.
5. In ifttt In the Username to Watch box put: DansDeals.
6. From the dropdown menu, choose the group that you made in groupme (which you are the only one in it).
(7. In the message box, you can cut out the “(via Twitter {{LinkToTweet}})” part.)

dave

thnanks doing it this way will enable me to send sms texts to my basic phone?

OD

can you provide more details?

Texas Totty

I get a delay of a few minutes but still better than nothing. I also set up ifttt for email which is usually quicker.

dave

will this work to get sms texts to basic phone

Mike

Yes but you need computer or smartphone to set up

dave

How long does it take to receive texts by using this method I have not received any yet

dave

hmm still not working

Kathy Strand

Thanks for this information. I thought something was “broken.” I use the SMS notifications even though I do have the app on my smart phone. Very annoying that Twitter gave no notice of this. I wasted time trying to problem solve.

bigissy

which countries still allow sms. cant we just switch the account to those places or start a new account in those places then sms will work or is it based on phone number?

Simcha

@dan I emailed you a workaround

tzip

I’m wondering how to go about unsubscribing from SMS dd messages. I tried replying stop, but then I am blocked out of all other GroupMe chats that I have (family etc.) . Any suggestions?

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