Japanese operator DoCoMo and Twitter launch location based alerts

NTT DoCoMo Inc has partnered with US social networking service Twitter Inc to jointly develop a location based alert service for smartphone users based on tweets, according to the report in the Nikkei business daily.

The paper also reported that the two firms have signed an agreement under the terms of which Twitter will provide its databases to DoCoMo and the services will be launched this winter.

However, Twitter will remove data that could identify users, before using the stored tweets for this service, the business daily said.

The necessary software will be initially available only for DoCoMo smartphones, the Nikkei added.