Sorry Samsung, first tweet from Everest was actually the second

David Heath
Sunday, 08 May 2011 14:21

Opinion and Analysis

In what was hoped to be a major viral marketing campaign, Samsung arranged for a tweet to be sent from the top of Mt Everest using their brand-new Galaxy S II smart phone.  Unfortunately, their claims of being the first have been dashed.

British mountaineer Kenton Cool sent the tweet at 10:27am, on May 6th (the timezone used is unclear): "Everest summit no 9! 1st tweet from the top of the world thanks to a weak 3G signal & the awesome Samsung Galaxy S2 handset! @samsunguk"

And if you weren't convinced that this was all about the marketing, there's a rather hokey video of Cool wearing a special Galaxy S II t-shirt showing off the phone at Everest Base Camp (you have to watch the video just to see him pull the phone out of a pre-cut hole in an ice-wall!).

So, we have the video, the tweet and loud claims of a record - first tweet from the summit of Everest.

Unfortunately not.

Certainly it was the first tweet using the recently installed mobile phone station at Base Camp and also the first using 3G technology.  But it wasn't the first.

That award goes to US climber Eric Larsen when he tweeted on October 15th 2010, "Everest summit! -Sent with @DeLormeGPS Earthmate PN-60w."

Eric's tweet was sent via GPS device (the DeLorme PN-60w) which was tightly coupled with a satellite communications module (the SPOT satellite communicator).  This combination is essentially a mountaineer's GPS coupled with a safety device able to send short messages such as "I'm fine," "Help" or "911."  In addition, the PN60w is able to pass messages to the SPOT for transmission, hence the tweet. 

So, sorry Samsung, the Galaxy certainly made the first phone call from the summit, but not the first tweet.