Breaking tweet! Twitter marries Airtel -- they're exclusive now

Today, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone tweeted while in Japan: "It's just after 4am in Tokyo but I'm awake and excited about India and our new partner, Bharti Airtel."

The breaking news on the official Twitter blog and breakingtweet.com ("world news twitter-style") is that Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile provider, has enabled SMS tweets to be sent at standard rates through a service called TweetSMS. Receiving tweets will be free. The deal with Airtel is exclusive.

How do you start TweetSMS? Website Telecom Talk takes you through the registration process step by step.

The service allows users to tweet without Internet connections on mobile phones.

The Times of India reported that India is already one of Twitter’s largest subscriber bases, with more than five million registered users.

The official Twitter blog said, "Twitter is not about technology, it's about people. We worked quickly to establish full SMS service in India with the largest operator because organic growth in the region has been unusually strong and there is huge potential for positive impact.

"India already shines brightly with Twitter advocates like film stars Priyanka Chopra @priyankachopra Gul Panag @gulpanag, Mallika Sherawat @mallikala, director Karan Johar @kjohar25, Minister of State Shashi Tharoor @shashitharoor, upper house member Pritish Nandy @pritishnandy, news anchors Barkha Dutt @bdutt and Vir Sanghvi @virsanghvi, plus media outlets MTV India @MTVindia and NDTV @ndtv, just to name a few."

How big is the deal? Biz Stone reports, "There are over one billion people with Internet access on the planet, but there are more than four billion people with mobile phones and Twitter can work on all of them because even the simplest of these devices feature SMS."

Now just remember, every time you want to tell an uninterested world how you're hanging this morning, you help pump up the Indian economy.