Viva, the fastest growing mobile carrier in Dominican Republic, has launched TwitVoz service on its mobile network.

With this solution, that has been sourced from Kirusa, the world's well known vendor of Voice SMS and developer of mobile value added services, the Viva DR mobile subscribers can update their status on Twitter through voice tweets.

TwitVoz service provides a very convenient alternative to texting and is available to all Viva DR GSM and CDMA subscribers across Dominican Republic. The mobile subscribers can sign up for the service at viva.com.do/vas or directly at the callntweet.com web portal.

To speak and update their status on Twitter, the subscribers only need to dial 8948 (TWIT) and can use any language to talk. Approximately 0.03 USD is to be paid by the subscribers for sending a voice tweet from their mobile and to update their Twitter status.

In addition, the users, for the same price of DOP 1, have the option to send a text tweet to the same short code, 8948.

Miguel Toirac, Viva's Value Added Services Manager, said, 'Call-n-Tweet holds various benefits for the Twitter user community over a text tweet. It is easier and faster to tweet using voice. Audio works better than simple text as your voice can convey your emotions. Sending an audio message is a richer medium and users are not restricted to the message length of 160 characters. Call-n-Tweet can also be effectively used for micro blogging.'

Commenting on the launch, Jean Carlo Sandy, CEO of Viva DR, said: 'TwitVoz, or Call-n-Tweet, is one-of-its-kind service that makes it very convenient for our subscribers to send voice tweets while on the move. Social networking sites have become a very important part of our lives and constant interactions between people using sites such as Twitter make this ecosystem more vibrant. Our subscribers are looking for ways to interact with the social networking sites from their mobiles. We chose Kirusa for this solution for their proven expertise in working with Twitter. They also helped us launch the product in less than two weeks.'

Speaking on the launch, Surinder Singh Anand, VP of Product Management at Kirusa, said, 'We congratulate Viva for the pioneering launch of TwitVoz, the first voice tweeting application launched by a carrier worldwide. Kirusa's Call-n-Tweet product is designed to be offered by carriers to allow their mobile subscribers to connect with social networking sites such as Twitter. In addition, subscribers in USA can sign up at callntweet.com and use the service for free.'

In related news, the Altruist Group, a leader in wireless voice services, has announced a joint initiative with Kirusa, one of the leading developers of mobile value added services.