“Now, even if phone lines and the Internet are inaccessible — for example, in a war zone or after a natural disaster — people will be able to share news and stay informed via Twitter,” the company says on its blog.

“We work with as many carriers as we can to support SMS around the world,” Twitter says. “If your carrier does not currently support Twitter SMS, you can still Tweet. Just use one of our long codes.”

Those can be found here.

As the company points out, Twitter did begin as an SMS service. Over the years, Twitter has become even more SMS-friendly, as evidenced by today’s update.

For example, in 2010, Twitter started letting users in the U.S. follow Twitter accounts via SMS without actually signing up for Twitter.

Within apps alone, you can do your banking, queue up (or watch) Netflix choices, edit HD photos, learn to play guitar, or buy anything on Amazon and track the UPS shipment.

With some simple accessories that plug in to the iPhone, you can record in stereo, take telephoto lens pictures, and swipe credit cards.

So, why hasn’t some enterprising developer come up with this career-saving add-on yet? I’m sure there are lots of young, upwardly-mobile professionals who would appreciate someone, or something, having their back on a Saturday night. For company-issued phones, it should be installed by IT before ever being put into anyone’s hands.

In fact, if RIM makes it to this first, it might just be the biggest comeback story of the year.

In this announcement for the app on the Yahoo Mail blog, there is only mention of an Android version, and no mention of an iPhone version, though an iPhone is shown in the image provided (above) – I guess to just show that iPhone users can still get text messages from it.

“For those heavy texters out there, we are excited to introduce Hub, a fast and easy-to-use mobile messaging app that allows you to send text messages and have group conversations for free,” says the Yahoo Mail team. “Hub allows you to easily add participants to any conversation thread so it’s easy to switch from private messaging to a group conversation. Whether it is just keeping up with a close group of friends or making spontaneous plans, you no longer have to deal with scattered messages.”

“What’s more, Hub allows you to send messages to anyone without incurring any text messaging fees,” the company adds. “Yes, you heard us right. There are no text messaging fees – messages are sent over WIFI or using your data connection – and Hub is device agnostic, which means you can communicate with anyone on any mobile device as long as you have their mobile phone numbers. Your friends are not required to download the app in order to reply to your messages although they are strongly encouraged to do so in order to enjoy the full feature set!”

This isn’t the first app to to offer free text messaging, but the Yahoo brand probably won’t hurt in it getting some downloads. It has group messaging, and support for local and international SMS messages.

You do have to have a Yahoo ID to use the app from the looks of it.

Earlier this week, Yahoo launched a new version of Yahoo Messenger (11.5). Yahoo lists the highlights as follows:

Now, it has been revealed that AT&T is going to offer only unlimited text messing plans starting August 21. There was previously a $10 plan for 1,000 messages.

Engadget, who first learned about the plans, shares in an article called “AT&T Streamlining Individual Messaging Plans August 21st, Leaving Unlimited As the Sole Survivor,” this official statement from AT&T:

“We regularly evaluate our offers and are making some adjustments to our messaging lineup.

Starting August 21, we’re streamlining our text messaging plans for new customers and will offer an unlimited plan for individuals for $20 per month and an unlimited plan for families of up to five lines for $30 per month. The vast majority of our messaging customers prefer unlimited plans and with text messaging growth stronger than ever, that number continues to climb among new customers. Existing customers don’t have to change any messaging plan they have today, even when changing handsets.”

There is plenty of reaction around the tech blogosphere as you could imagine. TechCrunch writer MG Siegler goes so far as to say on his personal blog, “A cynical person may think that AT&T are being huge fucking scumbags here. Really, they’re just ‘streamlining’ their plans. Just like when they ‘streamlined’ their plans by removing unlimited data a few months back. It’s all in the name of what’s best for the consumer. What class acts.”

Here’s some reaction from the Twitterverse:

Some are complaining about the service itself:

In other AT&T news, Reuters reports that the company is suing customers who are trying to block its deal with T-Mobile.

There are free features as well as upgrade features available. For free, users can receive text notifications when users are added or removed, when the theme changes, and/or when the privacy settings change. 

With the Text Messaging Upgrade, users can protect their blog by using a two-step login process, and a text message will be sent to their phone upon login with a passcode that must be entered in order to access the Dashboard. 

With the upgrade, users can also get notified of new comments and moderate them with a text reply, as well as send a reply to comments they receive. Finally, users can send a text for a new post to be added to the blog instantly. 

The new text features are only available in the U.S. at this point. Standard text message and data rates apply, of course. 

The upgrade costs $20 a year. It can be accessed from the Dashboard. 

I can’t imagine blogging through SMS being very fun, but it could come in handy if something comes up, and you don’t have access to a computer, but you need to blog about it. The other features should be quite useful. 

"We’ve always been big fans of trusty SMS messaging. In fact, sending a text was originally the only way users could tweet. This is why Tweets are 140 characters — they need to fit into a text message," says Twitter’s Leland Rechis. "We value SMS because it’s simple, instant and universal."

Users can also now get SMS alerts from Twitter accounts they wish to. From a computer, you can hover over a user’s name or avatar, and click on the little phone icon that appears in the "hovercard". You will then get a text every time that user tweets – probably not a good idea unless you have an unlimited text plan. You can also set alerts from your phone by sending "on [username]" or "off [username]" to 40404. You can send "on" or "off" to start and stop text messages altogether.

Finally, if you text "get [username]" the user’s most recent tweet will be sent to you phone. There are more commands here.

In other Twitter news, Mashable is reporting that the company will launch its official Tweet button this week. This is for publishers to stick on their content and increase traffic.

The Twitter-Cloudhopper relationship apparently goes back quite a ways.  Kevin Thau, Twitter’s director of mobile business development, explained on the Twitter Blog this afternoon that they’ve been working together for about eight months.

As for what, precisely, everyone’s been up to all this time, Thau wrote that Cloudhopper "enables Twitter to connect directly to mobile carrier networks in countries all over the planet."  And, post-acquisition, Cloudhopper is supposed to "help us further grow and scale our SMS service."

Not many other details are available at this point.  Terms of the purchase weren’t disclosed, and no one’s discussed specific projects or growth goals.  (Thau just said Twitter’s currently processing close to one billion SMS tweets per month.)

Cloudhopper’s site states that it was founded in 2008 by Lauer, at least, and a little LinkedIn research shows that both Lauer and Kanaar used to work for one other organization – an SMS aggregator that’s been called both Simplewire and OpenMarket at different times in its history.

Google is now letting users send the message to multiple people at once. Users now just need to click on the SMS button at the top of their Google Voice inbox, enter the names/numbers in the "To" field, separated by commas, and write the message.

"Replies from each recipient will be threaded into separate conversations, so you can keep track of them in your Google Voice inbox," explains

Google’s Greg Hecht. "To prevent spam, we’ve set a maximum of five recipients per message."

The feature is also available in the Google Voice Chrome extension in the recently released gallery. Google says it will soon be adding it to the Google Voice mobile app.

Last week Google launched the new Google Voice mobile web app for iPhone OS 3.0 and higher and Palm Web OS devices. It utilizes HTML5.

Related Articles:

> Google Voice Gets New Free VoIP Service

> Report Indicates Google Bought Gizmo5

> You Don’t Need A Google Number To Use Google Voice

This round of funding might be particularly significant for the company. "We believe this latest round provides ChaCha the cash required to reach profitability," says CEO Scott A. Jones.

Over the past four years, since its inception, ChaCha has raised about $52 million from prominent tech leaders, venture capitalists, and angel investors. The company says its text service passed Google in mobile text traffic in Q3 2009. According to ChaCha, when the company’s mobile service launched in January 2008, Google SMS had nearly 100% of he mobile text search market, but ChaCha now has more text traffic, coming from users mostly under the age of 25.

That may be why ChaCha is considering itself the "#1 way for advertisers to reach teens and young adults on their mobile phones."

"Given that we started our mobile text service less than 2 years ago, that also makes us the fastest-growing mobile text service that provides advertisers with a way to reach elusive teens and young adults," says Jones. " We have been monetizing from national brands and local businesses who want to be ‘in the conversation.’  We have provided a successful advertising venue for brands, including The CW Network, IKEA, Paramount Pictures, McDonald’s, Palm, Coca Cola, AT&T, J&J, P&G, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and hundreds of other businesses."

"ChaCha acts as a ‘smart friend’ to answer any question via text (or voice, iPhone, or twitter), particularly from college-age and high school-age students," adds Mr. Jones.  "While many headlines frequently report ‘mobile web’ search traffic stats, the reality is that ‘smart phones’ represent less than 20% of phones that are in users’ hands today (iPhones represent about 6%).  For the vast majority of mobile phone users, the common denominator of texting, which works on virtually all phones, is the more universal way to get answers.  Interestingly, our new iPhone app gets MORE engagement from users than our mobile text service, which leads us to believe that ChaCha will be even more successful as smart phones (iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, etc…) continue to proliferate."

Between its mobile and online services, ChaCha has answered over 300 million questions in the past two years. The company cites data from Quantcast, which indicate it gets over 10 million unique monthly visitors in the US.

Related Articles:

> Need Answers? Text ChaCha!

> ChaCha Gets Extra-Important $10M In Funding

> ChaCha Receives $6 Million To Keep Dancing

"Ping.fm is compatible with every single Internet device in the world, which why it has become so successful among thousands of users," says Seesmic. "Try using chat to update Twitter, and you’ll find it direct and seamless as you can post updates from gtalk, aim or skype through Ping.fm. It’s so simple and amazing, and it’s always on."

Social Networks that Ping.fm supports:

"Thanks to its powerful and simple API, more than a hundred applications already use Ping.fm to update all the main social networks and Seesmic commits to maintaining and improving the Ping.fm platform," says Seesmic. "Not only has Twhirl supported Ping.fm for about a year, but we are also preparing to open Seesmic apps with our own plug-in architecture so we understand and care about the developer community."

A list of apps that support Ping.fm can be found here.

Seesmic says that Seesmic applications on Blackberry, Android, Web, Windows and OSX via Air will all have advanced Ping.fm integration "very shortly," and will instantly support 50 social networks. Users will be able to update not only with the apps they are used to, but also with Ping.fm’s email, sms and chat gateways, the company says. 

Seesmic applications have been downloaded over three and a half million times. Financial details about the acquisition have not been made public.

Related Articles:

> Seesmic’s Acquisition of Twhirl

> Seesmic Befriends (And Buys) Twitter Client Twhirl

> Update Your Status Across Dozens of Social Media Sites