Android Update Source: Twitter Expands Its Alerts Services To The UK And Ireland To Push Out Critical Info From UK Police And Others

Twitter Alerts - a service that Twitter launched in September for emergency, relief and charity organizations from the U.S., Japan and Korea to send out critical messages to opted-in users - is getting more international. Today, the newly public company is turning on Twitter Alerts in the UK and Ireland.

Some 57 Twitter accounts across the two countries have signed on so far, including all 47 UK police forces, An Garda Síochána in Ireland, the London Fire Brigade, the Mayor of London's office, the Foreign Office, and the Environment Agency - who will now send those interested alerts on their latest critical news, with the information appearing as highlighted Tweets, SMS notifications, and push notifications if you use Twitter's iOS or Android apps. For all of these, users have to opt-in.

Since last year, Twitter has been trying out a lot of different features as part of a philosophy of innovate through experimentation, from new features in its Timeline to new looks on its apps. Some of these go on to become full features, and some fall by the wayside. The fact that Twitter Alerts is now expanding beyond its its original footprint is a sign that it might be one of those that is here to stay.

Although a spokesperson declined to comment to me about where Twitter Alerts might go next, I noticed that when you signed up for Alerts to come to your phone, you were given a specific lists of countries from which you could register your phone. This could be a list of where Twitter may be looking to launch this service next.

Alerts complements some of the other products Twitter has launched in recent months that use notifications to flag information to its users - a way to help shape the service and promote people to interact more on the platform. EventParrot and MagicRecs use direct messages sent to those who follow the accounts with details respectively of big events, and users and tweets seeing surges of momentum. Twitter labels both accounts “experiments” for now, so like many tests

While both MagicRecs and EventParrot are personalized to your own profile as it exists on Twitter (it essentially alerts you to what's going on in your own defined Twitter sphere of influence), Alerts is positioned a bit differently. The service is more like a dedicated one-to-many broadcast channel for those who have opted in to receive it, with the alerts coming in your timeline, but also, if you have activated the feature, as SMS messages and as push notifications on the mobile Android or iOS apps.

For now, Alerts are free both for consumers and NGOs and emergency organizations to activate and use - a reminder of how Twitter has positioned itself as the town square for the connected world. But as Twitter builds these out, and measures what kind of a response people have to the different features, I wouldn't be surprised to see the same framework potentially applied to sponsored messaging, too.