Now You Can Follow Twitter Users Without an Account
Twitter has introduced a new feature called “Fast Follow” that makes it easy to follow anyone via SMS, even if you don’t have a Twitter account (if you’re located in the U.S. at least).
To use it, all you need to do is text “follow [username]” to Twitter’s shortcode of 40404. From there, you’ll start receiving all of that user’s updates via text message.
Twitter seems to envision Fast Follow being used largely in advertising. The company encourages people to, “Try it out the next time you see a Twitter @username at a restaurant or store, on a billboard or on TV, or if you hear one mentioned on the radio.”
While a fairly simple feature, it’s an interesting twist that could ultimately bring Twitter to the tens of millions of passive users who occasionally consume tweets from their favorite people or brands but don’t care to tweet themselves. Essentially, the service can simply act as a text message-based newsletter of sorts.
Twitter’s blog has some more details on the feature and a few other text message features being made available with the service.
I’m not sure what to think of this one. I guess it would be OK for those with unlimited texting plans, which I do have, but I still don’t like the idea of getting sales tweets (as they imply in the article) on my phone as I’m annoyed even by the free texts Sprint sends as sales pitches. Not to mention if you tweet a lot like I do, someone’s phone might explode. 
What do you think? Would you use it?