The Tangible Effects of Twitter & Facebook

Posted on | December 31, 2009

There are only a couple of hours left in 2009. People already started sending a lot of messages with good wishes, but this year something is drastically different. I did not get a single SMS yet and most of the people I spoke to are not going to send SMSes as they used to. They will use Twitter and Facebook.
Why does this matter? Well it matters a lot to mobile operators who usually made loads of money on new year’s eve, mainly from SMSes and voice calls.
I think this year is going to be the first one where operators will see a decline in revenue from messaging on new year’s eve since massive wish sending will move to other channels, mainly Facebook.
Let’s try to estimate what this might mean. Let’s suppose one has around 10 good friends = 10 sent SMSes per capita (people have more/less good friends but I think 10 sent SMSes on average is a fair estimation - comments are welcome). The biggest operator in Slovenia has approximately 1.4 mio users, this makes the total sum of sent SMSes 14mio. Each SMS costs around 0.1€. So 1.4 mio € is made in a single night by a fairly small operator in the middle of nowhere.

Now apply these numbers on a large scale for operators such as Vodafone or Orange. If only a small percentage of users chooses Twitter or Facebook as their wish delivery channel this means a huge loss in revenue on for the operators. Try to imagine what is going to happen a few years down the road when this revenue source will be almost gone. Good times indeed.

Have a smashing 2010, you will not be getting an SMS from me :)

Update: Apparently I was very wrong and had too much faith in the Web too early. Mobitel itself delivered 17 mio SMSes on New Year’s Eve (5 mio more than a year before). Source (in Slovene)

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