Twitter teams with NTT DoCoMo for 'touch and follow' app

Twitter will collaborate with Japanese operator giant NTT DoCoMo to develop new applications integrating social media and search services into smartphones and feature phones. DoCoMo said it will add real-time tweets and related Twitter content to search results across both its i-mode feature phone portal and DoCoMo Market smartphone portal, promising its 58 million customers a richer, more relevant user experience--in addition, the operator will update an existing "touch and follow" application enabling subscribers to tap their feature phones together to exchange Twitter follow permissions via NFC data transmission.

Twitter usage continues to explode, with the total number of daily tweets increasing to 155 million in the first quarter of 2011, up from 55 million a year ago. Twitter reports that monthly account signups increased 52 percent worldwide between December 2010 and March 2011, with U.S. growth topping 57 percent. Mobile continues to play a dramatic role in the microblogging service's growth, with a 50 percent increase in monthly unique mobile signups during the first quarter--the Twitter for Android application experienced a 104 percent increase in monthly use during the quarter, with Twitter for iPhone growing 55 percent and Twitter for BlackBerry up 51 percent.

Twitter now boasts over 200 million users worldwide. Mobile tweets make up over 40 percent of all Twitter posts, the firm said earlier this year, adding that 50 percent of all active Twitter users are also active on mobile.

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