You can use your cell phone to send and receive tweets as text messages. You control what tweets appear on your cell phone as text messages.

• Before You Start: You have a business Twitter account and you have your cell phone connected to your account.
• Learning level: 3 | Building Skills
• Article last updated: Thursday, September 22, 2011

Receive Tweets As Text Messages

First, you must decide how many tweets you want to receive on your cell phone as text messages. You can choose between these Text Message Notifications options:

• Mobile Notifications. Tweets from people you’ve enabled for mobile notifications. You mark each person whose tweets you want to receive on your cell phone.
• Direct Messages. All direct messages from everyone to text messages.
• Mentions and replies. All tweets that contain your Twitter username. You can choose to limit these to people you follow, or get these tweets from all users.

You can choose as many options as you want. Choosing no option means that no tweets are sent to you cell phone.

Receive No Text Messages

To set up your Twitter account to send no tweets to your cell phone as a text message:

1. Under your account name, go to the Setting option and select the Mobile option.
2. Under Text Message Notifications, uncheck each option in the list.
3. Click Save.

Receive Tweets As Text Messages

To set up your Twitter account to send tweets to your cell phone as a text message:

1. Under your account name, go to the Setting option and select the Mobile option.
2. Under Text Message Notifications, select one or more of the tweet options in the list.
3. Click Save.

Mark People For Mobile Notifications

To set up your phone to receive all tweets from selected people you follow to your cell phone as a text message, you must individually mark each user for mobile:

1. Click Home.
2. Click the number of people you are Following.
3. Scroll through the list until you find a person whose tweets you want to receive on your cell phone as text messages.
4. Click on the user name. Twitter displays the user profile in the flyout (right pane).
5. Locate the mobile phone icon (next to the Following button).
6. Click the mobile phone icon.  (Solid green icon means you receive this person’s tweets as text messages.)
7. Repeat Step 3 through Step 6 for each person you follow whose tweets you want to receive on your mobile phone.

Additional Tips

Here are some additional tips about receiving tweets as text messages.

• To turn off text messages from a person, click the cell phone icon in the person’s profile. A white icon means that you do not receive this person’s tweets as text messages.
• You can set the device update option for new people when you follow them using Twitter.com.
• You can use text message commands to turn off and on device updates for individual people from your cell phone.
• If you receive text messages on your phone, you can also set up sleep hours to turn off incoming text messages during a specific time during the day.
• You can change your receiving option at any time from Twitter.com or through the Twitter text message commands.

Sending Tweets As Text Messages

After linking your cell phone to your Twitter account, you can send tweets through text messages.

1. Display the appropriate screen on your cell phone to send a text message.
2. Use the appropriate Twitter text message address.  (In the United States, use 40404.)
3. Type you tweet using up to 140 characters.
4. Send your text message.

Here are some additional tips about sending tweets as text messages.

• Each time Twitter sends you a tweet as a text message, it appears on your phone like any other text message. Check your phone’s user manual if you have any questions about receiving text messages.
• You can send @replies and direct messages from your cell phone using the text message commands from your cell phone.
• Check your phone’s user manual if you have any questions about sending text messages.
• After linking your phone to your Twitter account, you can always send text messages to Twitter no matter what receiving option you select.
• If you are outside the US, check this list of text message addresses.
• For more information, see the Twitter FAQ about text messages and phones.

Your turn: Do you use the text message feature of Twitter? What tips and tricks can you share with the community?

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