Twitter to do NFC follows, live results in Japan

Twitter's ambitions for Japan were expanded past smartphone alerts on Friday after NTT DoCoMo promised a slew of new features. At least with feature phones, the carrier plans to use NFC (near field communications) to let Twitter users follow each other through a new version of the "touch and follow" feature. Those using either the DoCoMo Market on a smartphone or i-mode on a feature phone will get real-time Twitter updates fed into search results.

The NFC component doesn't have a fixed release date, but the Twitter results will start showing up late this year or early next.

Phones with NFC have been a common sight in Japan as the technology is used for FeliCa wireless payments. Smartphones are only just getting NFC and so far are mostly limited to the Google Nexus S, although the Galaxy S II and more are due to get it later in the year. RIM has it in the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and may be matched later on in 2011 by the iPhone 5 and future Windows Phone devices.

By Electronista Staff

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