> <rant>
> Since our discussions, things have predictably settled. It was never
> the intention that this mailing list becomes a 'chat' forum - there
> are plenty of other places for that. Instead, it's a way for us to
> have a central node as a community to collaborate on. I'm quite proud
> of what's become of it.

> One new initiate has been born - the distributed database - which
> several silicon beacher's having picked this up and are experimenting
> with now. It's going to be interesting to see what we can cook up for
> release later this year.
> </rant>

> But I've now got a new proposal. Building on some thoughts I tweeted
> before[1], I have a solution that will do three separate things that
> will help our industry.

> Background
> Twitter has become the most important social networking site for the
> Australia tech community. It facilitates meet ups, keeps people up to
> date, breaks news, and generally builds community.

> Today - news was announced that twitter would be shutting off its SMS
> service for international numbers because they now long can
> sustain[2] . This leaves Australian users completely out in the cold
> on one of the most valuable features of the technology. Separately,
> the micro-blogging revolution that Twitter has created is going to
> create transformative impacts on the industry. The embrace of Plurk
> and Identi.ca by Australia's twitter community to name but two
> examples, of how things are happening. However what these open source
> solutions lack is an SMS solution.

> The idea
> What I propose, is that as a community, we create a SMS solution that
> brings back Twitter to the phone for us as well as supporting other
> twitter clones.

> SMS gateways, including an Australian startup in Sydney, allow you to
> set up premium SMS plans. So for example, if people subscribe to your
> plan - it will cost you 55 cents. However, as the organiser of that
> plan, you get 18 cents for every message you get. It's an innovative
> revenue model, which I have explored in the past as part of my
> research into the mobile web opportunity.

> If we can hack together something that links the twitter API and a SMS
> gateway API like that of Ivo Brett's startup[2], we can restore SMS
> functionality. Oh, and make a bit of money.

> Sure, this is a market opportunity for a entrepreneur. I reckon you
> could make a quick buck, until a phone company or Twitter wakes up.
> But personally, I think it's too small scale an idea to launch a
> business, but too big an opportunity to pass up.

> So by building this service, as Silicon Beach - we've now got a
> revenue stream...for the comunity. The revenue raised, will be 100%
> reinvested into the community. Sponsoring conferences, meetups - heck
> wherever there is value to support effort in the community.

> Twitter becomes useful + we make opensource microblogging useful + we
> fund our community without realising it. Three bigs things, and all it
> takes is a bit of API hackery as some Jelly-a-thon.

> Thoughts?

> [1]http://twitter.com/liako/statuses/887005932
> [2]http://blog.twitter.com/2008/08/changes-for-some-sms-usersgood-and-ba...
> [3]http://www.me2mobile.com