Fast Follow on Twitter

On their blog yesterday Twitter was talking about the ability to 'fast follow' another user or company without the need to sign up for an account. At the moment this is only available to US users, however they state that they are working on extending it to other countries.

The way it works is by texting 'follow NotifyUSERNAME' to 40404 (in the US). This then allows you to receive tweeted updates from that company, even though you don't have a Twitter account. You won't appear in the users followers list though unless you sign up.

This will be great a opportunity when it comes to the UK. It will allow advertisers to place their Twitter name in their advertising, be it on bill boards, TV ads, press ads etc in much the same way as they now have a URL on display. It will become one of the ways of measuring engagement with outdoor media.

Clearly this does depend on having some way to view the number of users who are receiving tweets as part of fast follow. I'm sure the great team at Twitter have already sorted this issue out or are working on a solution.