Follow Twitter Accounts Without One

If you are located in the US, Twitter is now providing the ability to follow anyone on Twitter through SMS, even if you do not have a Twitter account yourself. The feature is called Fast Follow and was presented on Twitter’s blog with some other SMS tips. It seems pretty simple and straight forward according to the blog’s description. Just send a message to the Twitter shortcode from your phone as “follow [TwitterAccount]”. So if you wanted to Follow Steve Patterson (@srpatterson) then send a message to 40404 like “follow SRPatterson”. You will then begin to receive all their tweats as text messages.

You can also create a Twitter account just as easily by texting “signup” to 40404. Another great tip is to only get a users most recent tweat, text “Get [TwitterAccount]”. This will retrieve the users most recent tweat and not place you on the users follow list.

These new features make getting information from Twitter more accessible to individuals that are casual about their use of the service and do not prefer to tweat themselves. Maybe someone likes a certain celebrity and wants updates from the celebrities Twitter account on their phone. It would be like a personal newsletter from the celebrity available anywhere and all the time.

For marketing purposes, advertisers can promote their twitter accounts on displays and have some expectation that people interested in their product will follow them and receive relevant information immediately after seeing the advertising piece. For conferences or social events, following a company that is active at the event can help in timing and getting full access to the vendor at convenient times.