Twitter has bought out its SMS partner Cloudhopper for an undisclosed amount. The start up has been working with Twitter to build Twitter’s SMS messaging service and as of Friday April 23 it is now part of the messaging community.
Cloudhopper, a messaging infrastructure company has enabled Twitter to connect directly to mobile carrier networks in countries around the globe including the main US and UK markets as well as the fast expanding South East asian market.
Twitter’s mobile strategy, products, and partnerships man Kevin Thau explained the reasons behind the purchase on the Twitter blog .
“Twitter was inspired by SMS and we continue to embrace this simple but ubiquitous technology. In fact, Twitter’s 140 character limit was designed specifically to allow for any tweet to be read in its entirety whether you’re using a rudimentary mobile phone, or a more sophisticated Internet enabled device.”
Adding “Over the last eight months we have been working with a startup called Cloudhopper to become one of the highest volume SMS programs in the world—Twitter processes close to a billion SMS tweets per month and that number is growing around the world from Indonesia to Australia, the UK, the US, and beyond.”
Twitter will use Cloudhopper to further grow and scale its SMS service.