Apple Integrates Twitter: Why This Is Big
Despite you and I spending, on average, 1 out of every 8 waking minutes typing, uploading or playing on Facebook, Apple quietly announced last week at its Worldwide Developer's Conference that it will deeply integrate Facebook’s biggest competitor, the micro-blogging social network Twitter, into its new mobile operating system, iOS 5.
If you are an iPhone or iPad user, it’s much bigger news that you might have thought, and it makes sense.
With its text-message-based 140 character limit, Twitter was designed for cell phones from day one. In fact, as a concession to pre-smart phone text messaging limits, the social network was first introduced as Twttr, leaving two extra characters to say “hi” or “oh” or “ok.”
This marriage could, however, benefit Twitter more than Apple — at least at first. C’mon, there are almost half a million apps out there for the iOS devices. Half a million, and each of them can be made to share some bit of information on Twitter, which can be retweeted, expanding an app’s reach even further than the person using it. Some fraction of Apple app users will feel drawn to create their own Twitter account to share with new followers.
Expect a lot more tweets telling you someone just made it into the second level of Angry Birds, or just finished their favorite iBook. If you can deal with Twitpics of broken toes or burnt pepperoni Hot Pockets, you can deal with this, too.
Depending on who you ask, there are around 175 - 200 million Twitter accounts out there, although reports say almost half of them have essentially abandoned their accounts. They just didn’t get it. There are, however, over 100 million iPhone users out there, and they do “get” their devices. In fact, many love their iOS devices.
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