The micro-blogging service has now pulled the plug on outbound SMS alerts, citing escalating costs. This is the second market where usage of the SMS functionality has been restricted. The other country to lose SMS was the UK, where the plug was pulled in August.

Canadians will still be able to send Tweets to the Canadian shortcode (21212), but “unexpected changes in our billing” caused the company to stop outgoing texts. It claims costs have doubled over the past two months to continue providing the service.

“There is a realistic, scalable SMS solution for Canada (and the rest of the world.) We’re working on that and will post more details on the Twitter blog as we make progress,” the company said in a post it its status blog.

It is unclear what this means to the future of Twitter SMS here in the US, although the company has said earlier that deals with carriers are allowing the tweets to continue flowing.

However, with still no real revenue stream, and venture capital funding nearly the entire operation, its not hard to imagine that SMS may be considered non-essential when it comes time to make some cuts to save money.

 
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