Brief Episode

Have you ever looked at your monthly phone bill, and wondered who the heck you called in that bizarre area code several times that day? And why the heck a certain number or two shows up over and over again on your texting plan when the number isn’t familiar? That’s a thing of the past — if your carrier is T-Mobile and those numbers belong to Twitter or Google. We diverge from getting in touch with our online artist to get in touch with our inner accountant…

I’m not sure when it happened, or why, but T-Mobile adding a special name field for Twitter (Twttr) and Google certainly surprised me.

Here’s a sample from last month’s T-mobile bill.  I have unlimited texting, so I’m not worried about the costs.

Looking at the bill, I see that all those times I text for movies or directions to Google — or Tweet my status to Twitter and FaceBook — they now have their names appearing.

What’s up with the Twttr? For Google, I’m actually texting their number, which in letters is GOOGL — why did T-Mobile give Google a more readable description? And can Twitter buy a vowel?

With Caller ID information being available, I wish I could the sames of everyone I’m exchanging calls with.

Of course, paranoid as I am about corporations, I remember that it wasn’t that long ago that T-Mobile blocked Twitter.

But now that Oprah and Ashton Kutcher and Perez Hilton and various media gliterratti and major news outlets have all joined the Twitterverse, I note with some satisfaction, that, so has T-Mobile! They don’t update a lot, but the folks at T-Mobile have made it easier for me to spot how often I text my Tweets right on my bill.