Twitter announced a new feature last night, called Fast Follow, that could be useful to media companies, especially news organizations.

The Fast Follow feature is a quick way to follow a Twitter account directly from a mobile phone. It essentially cuts out the computer out of the equation. The Twitter blog explains the feature, “Instead of directing viewers or listeners to their laptops with a URL, you can send them to their phones with Fast Follow instructions.”

Here’s how it works, a host would announce instructions on how to follow an account. To subscribe all viewers or listeners have to do is to send a short text: ”follow [account]” to 40404 (that’s the U.S. short code, Canada’s is 21212)

This would subscribe the user to that Twitter account on their phone. Twitter says this is an easier, more direct subscription method because there’s no URL and no computer to boot up, and unlike computers, most people usually have their phone within reach.

You don’t even need a Twitter to subscribe, so it’s totally open-ended.

I could see this being handy for shows like Best Recipes Ever. I could see Kary Osmond saying “To get this recipe text ‘follow bestrecipesever’ to 21212.”

That’s it.

The balance for broadcasters is that you don’t want to bombard the users with too many tweets. No-one wants to get a hundred tweets a day on their cell or smart phone.

Unfortunately, this only works in the U.S. right now. Boo!

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