Vodafone India has partnered with Twitter to offer free access to the service for 90 days. Vodafone's prepaid and postpaid subscribers will be able to access Twitter through Android app or through mobile.twitter.com without any data charges. It's not clear why the deal is only limited to Android app and not to other smartphone Twitter apps as well. Interestingly, the offer comes with way too many caveats. The offer is not valid for subscribers who have portalnmms as their APN, using browser other than native Android browser, and to Vodafone BlackBerry subscribers. External links, pictures, videos and other media will also be charged according to the subscriber's data tariff. (pdf) However, since Vodafone charges to display media on external sites, displaying media from Twitter cards has become tricky. Twitter cards provides content preview of the link in the tweet and since Vodafone charges for this content, it blocks external media by default. What's more annoying is that Vodafone has gone one step ahead and is displaying ads in tweets with external media. Ads also pops up every time one tries to compose a tweet. (Hat tip @BeingPractical) Typically such partnerships are inked in order to drive more data usage and to be able to monetize these users after the deal period ends. By inserting ads while utilizing a basic feature such as composing a tweet, it's only spoiling the Twitter experience for the user. While Vodafone did not disclose the split between voice and data revenues, for the quarter ending June 30,…
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