TreoTwit may be cheaper than Twapper

I'm really happy that Twapper is a more cost-effective mechanism for posting Twitter updates than direct SMS messages.

But the years my mother spent drilling in the mantra of 'a penny saved is a penny earned' has kept me searching for still cheaper ways to tweet.

So I was quite thrilled to learn about TreoTwit a couple of nights ago, all thanks to Dan Rubin.

TreoTwit is a Palm OS application from Mitreo.com ("my Treo" in Spanish) that lets you post updates to Twitter directly without navigating through a web form.

The application itself is small (94kb) and simple. When you launch it, you get a screen that lets you enter up to 140 characters.


Image from the TreoTwit site

Click the "Update" button when you're done entering your tweet. The application uses GPRS on my Palm device to connect to Twitter, authenticate my Twitter user id and password (which I only had to specify once), then posts my update.

A little confirmation note appears briefly at the bottom of the page once your update is successfully posted.

While I have no actual numbers, I'm optimistic that this approach costs less than posting via Twapper, because there's no need to load a web page before or after entering the tweet. All that's left is the authentication, the text of the tweet itself, and a confirmation message afterwards.

* * *

The application was in v0.84 when I first downloaded it. That version was incompatible with my Treo 600 because my screen is only capable of displaying 160 x 160 pixels.

I posted my feedback on the TreoTwit support thread (registration required through a Spanish language interface! Thank God for babelfish on Altavista) and the folks at Mitreo kindly updated the application in less than 24 hours.

v0.85 is now installed on my Treo 600 and it works like a charm.

Now all I can possibly ask for is some data transfer estimates from Mitreo so I can figure out how much each TreoTweet actually costs me. It's on days like this that I wish I felt a bit more adventurous and a lot less math challenged, because the basis for an educated guess is probably buried somewhere in the Twitter API documentation.

* * *

Update 1: I tried using TreoTwit a couple of hours ago but got a "DNS error" message when I tried to post an update.

I switched to Twapper and was able to post an update through my phone browser, so it looks like the problem is not with Twitter itself. I've left a note at the TreoTwit Support thread and for now I'm hopeful that it's just a temporary problem.

* * *

Update 2: It's around 7 hours later and I just tried to post an update using TreoTwit -- it is working again. Hopefully the problem doesn't occur too often. And if it does, there's always Twapper.

Each Twapper update costs P4.53 (est. only)

For some time, I'd been looking for a cheaper way to send Twitter updates. Without a Philippine SMS center, each update via SMS message to Twitter's UK number costs me around P15 per message.

It was therefore hard to contain my excitement when I finally figured out how to use the Twapper feature in 30boxes Mobile to send my tweets. By my back-of-the-envelope estimates, it costs around P4.50 per update when I use Twapper.

That computation is based on the following assumptions (please feel free to correct my math):

• I transfer roughly 8 to 12 kb of data each time I load my Twapper page (without images), according to my Treo's web browser.
• Let's just use 15kb per page refresh to be on the safe side.
  
• I typically load the page twice whenever I post:
  
1. To access the form for posting, and
   
2. When the page refreshes to let me know if the update is successful.
• For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that I use the full 140 characters for all my 'tweets' (140 bytes)
  
• Let's add an admittedly arbitrary overhead of 50% to the tweet for authentication and other handshaking. This means the update itself requires at least 210 bytes or 0.2 kb
  
• Globe (my mobile provider) charges P0.15 / kb of transfer
• 15kb + 0.2kb + 15kb = 30.2 kb per update
  
• 30.2 kb * P0.15/kb = P4.53 per Twitter update via Twapper
  

Paying P4.53 per update is a lot more acceptable than P15, IMHO.

Caveat: this computation does not yet factor in all the typical post-paid billing adjustments (currency adjustment, VAT, etc.) that will, of course, apply.