Twitter Strikes Tweet Firehose Deal With Japan’s Largest Carrier, NTT DOCOMO

Up until now, when Twitter has struck deals overseas with carriers, it has mainly been for SMS deals so that users can send/receive tweets for free and/or cheap. Today, Twitter has announced a new type of deal with NTT DOCOMO, Japan's largest carrier: a content deal. As they've announced in Japanese on their blog (with English translation below), "Tweets and other Twitter content will be included in DOCOMO i-mode portal search results, providing access to relevant, real-time information." In other words, it's a deal similar to the one that Twitter struck with Google, Microsoft and others a few years back.