French telecoms giant Orange and micro-blogging specialist Twitter have signed a deal that will make it possible for TV viewers in Western Europe to take advantage of a “tweet and you watch” service. Scheduled to be introduced first in the UK, Orange expects people who are watching football matches to issue tweets to their followers, who will also be able to view the Twitter stream on their TVs. This means that Twitter has agreed to be fully integrated with a broad suite of digital media services made available through the Orange mobile portal.

Orange already offers social media service called Social Life in the UK. It provides a single site where users can access a number of social media websites, including Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. The roll-out of Orange’s Twitter TV offering is expected to move from the UK to France, Spain and Poland, initially, and then more broadly in Western Europe.

This article in the online Guardian UK provides some details. Mobile Twitter will be offered to Orange customers as part of their existing phone service. They will be able to put limits on the number of Tweets they receive, in order to control costs.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Recombinant Telephony, Twitter, micro-blogging, Orange