Texas State Technical College, Marshall campus is about to become a new case study for intelligent use of 2.0 services. They’ve set up a Twitter account and it’s populated largely with updates about the school’s campus, such as openings, closings, etc.

Sounds good, right?

Here’s the game winner for me - in their message to their MySpace members, Debra McIntosh, TSTC Director of Recruiting Services, says:

To receive messages from TSTCMarshall at nearly the speed of light you can have these messages sent to your cell phone as text messages. To set this service up, log into Twitter and click on “settings”. Enter your cell phone number in the box (include a “+” and leading “1″ so it will look like +19031112222), check the box allowing Twitter to send you text messages, and click “Save”. Twitter will send you a text message to verify you want to receive text messages on the phone number you provided. Depending on your cell phone provider and contract you may incur charges for text messages.

See it? Get it?

TSTC probably doesn’t have the money to set up an SMS gateway, certainly not a large scale commercial installation. Perhaps they don’t even have the need for it on a big scale. By using Twitter’s SMS integration, they’ve effectively set up a free SMS gateway using Twitter’s infrastructure for their students - and those students can text right back, thanks to Twitter’s architecture.

This is a great idea, great implementation, and completely cost-free for TSTC. They can post notices about lines at the financial aid office, campus closings, and much more, and not spend a dime doing it.

Hats off to TSTC!

You can follow them on Twitter at Twitter.com/tstcmarshall if you’re on Twitter.

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