Twitter, the wildly popular micro-blogging platform, has a growing number of Filipino users. As an avid Twitter myself, I can say that Twittering on the web is only half of what is it all about. The other is, of course, sending and receiving tweets on your mobile. Unfortunately for us, enabling this feature costs a lot as we have to send our tweets through a UK number. This workaround will allow you to text your tweets from your mobile for only P2.50 ($0.05).

Get a TwitterMail address
Go to TwitterMail.com and login with your Twitter username and password. You will be given your own TwitterMail e-mail address. Take note of this address as all messages sent to it will be posted as Tweets.

Use Smart’s Text-to-Email Feature
Compose a new message on your mobile phone in this format:
    <TWITTERMAIL ADDRESS> <TWEET POST>
    i.e. abcdefg@twittermail.com My first mobile tweet!
Send this to 200.

You will receive an SMS saying that your message has been received. Save the sender’s number as this will be unique to that address. The next time you tweet, just compose your message without the e-mail address and send it to that number. Each message sent will cost only 2.50 pesos. Pretty cool, right?

Enable Mobile Phone Notifications (optional)
If you want to be able to receive tweets from the persons that you are following, you need to enable phone notifications. Login to your Twitter account and enable mobile phone notifications under the Settings menu option. Send a text message with the code to the number posted on the screen. This will cost you around P15.00 but it will just be a one-time thing, unless you change your mobile number. You won’t be charged anything to receive an international SMS.

Awesome Add-ons
After being an official mobile twitter user, you can now use some of the services that will prove to be extremely useful for that forgetful brain of yours. There’s a full-featured to-do list at RememberTheMilk.com and the Timer Twitter bot. I personally use the Timer bot as it’s extremely simple. You can also check out MySmart and TwitterMail’s how page to find out some even more stuff that you could do on your mobile.

I am pretty sure that there is a Globe alternative to Smart’s text-to-email feature but I’m too lazy to search for it. If you know what it is, leave a comment and I’ll update this blog entry.