By Vince Lesch

Wireless carriers can capitalize on the unprecedented opportunity presented by the millions of monthly social network SMS updates, most often Twitter?s tweet messages. 

Two particular areas reveal the new realities of text message traffic. First, the carriers have an untapped new revenue channel: sponsored text added to SMS tweets. Second, next-generation SMS networks can cut costs and improve management of Twitter-driven message traffic spikes.

In-message SMS advertising, where sponsored text is appended to social network SMS messages, can turn the growing volume of social networking SMS into a new revenue opportunity for carriers.

This approach is especially important outside of the United States, where carriers typically do not charge text messages recipients ? meaning that Twitter or carriers pay for delivery costs. 

Revenue potential
Inserting advertisements into SMS messages is one example of monetizing unused space to deliver additional information to subscribers. Others include inserting location-based weather updates or sport scores. 

By selecting an SMS infrastructure supporting an open architecture and open interfaces for new functions, carriers can partner with third-party ad servers or other application providers to benefit subscribers, advertisers and carriers.

At a technical level, carriers position the advertisement below the tweet after a separator character. If the tweet is too long to carry the ad, carriers can create an additional message ? not charged to subscribers ? or send a Flash SMS, where subscribers see the advertisement immediately and must click it to view the SMS tweet.

Still, the typical tweet is 82.1 characters long, according to TwitterFriends. Even if Twitter user names are 20 characters, nearly 58 characters remain to stay within a single message.

Carriers can also track granular measurements, leading to refined agreements based on success metrics.

Cost-effectively managing spikes
Twitter also presents carriers with a compelling business case to evolve SMS architecture.

Multimillion message spikes ? already seen from person-to-person (P2P) communications around holidays or after breaking news ? are more likely with news organizations and celebrities having millions of Twitter followers. 

A series of tweets and re-tweets, where users copy and paste another?s content, can cause network bottlenecks.

The overload occurs because of the original SMS architecture developed in the early 1990s.

Then, service providers delivered far fewer P2P messages. Short message service centers (SMSCs) saved and then delivered incoming messages. Storage was needed because phones were often off and reception was less reliable. This legacy SMSC store-and-forward model, however, is ill-suited for today?s messaging needs.

A modern approach is a modular SMS network which breaks down the SMSC into separate functionalities.

Carriers can augment capacity only where needed, adding flexibility and reducing costs. Messages are sent via first delivery attempt to bypass storage, succeeding 85 percent to 95 percent of the time to drastically reduce storage needs.

A European carrier shared with us that of 3 million in-country Twitter users, about 15 percent receive SMS Twitter updates, generating more than 40 million SMS-based tweets monthly.

As Twitter usage continues to increase, carriers can profit from this new SMS era created by Twitter and other social networks.

Vince Lesch is vice president of product marketing at Tekelec, Morrisville, NC. Reach him at .