Hannah Birch is our new intern at Channel Signal. I’m picky about interns because we expect much from them. Hannah and I started talking about a year ago. I liked her blog, and her vision for herself. I liked her intelligence. Most of all I liked her work ethic. Here is her first blog entry for Channel Signal, and she takes on a big subject…the collaboration of Twitter and Apple. Here’s Hannah.
A small, blue bird landed on an apple. The bird sensed an opportunity. The apple, in Cupertino, California, responded in kind. A very big deal has been struck.
Steve Jobs recently announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference that Twitter capabilities will be extensively integrated into Apple’s new mobile operating system, iOS 5, which is rumored to be debuting in the fall. (Find Twitter’s announcement here.) There are several ramifications that go along with this.
First is ease of use. Instead of logging into different apps with separate accounts, Twitter credentials will be used on a single-sign-in basis. No more “click here to create an account with us” buttons on games or logging into an email account to share an article. It will all be under one blue, streamlined umbrella.
Second is the ability to tweet from just about anywhere on the phone. Safari, photo albums, contacts, Maps, Youtube, etc. will all be outfitted with options to tweet with a single click. This will make adding attachments to a tweet much more accessible, and Twitter’s development of its own photo-sharing service will only add to this aerodynamic feature.
Third is the sheer vibrance that tweets will likely acquire. Twitter streams could soon look like something akin to Facebook due to the richness of media, although there is still an opportunity for a fresh take on sharing. And, for better or worse, more noise in your stream is almost inevitable. (Can anyone say Farmville for Twitter?)
The Apple-Twitter partnership still has a few issues to address. Security, for instance, will probably be a concern as users share more personal information. The infamous 140-character limit could be a challenge, albeit a fun one, for tweeters that have more components to add to a single tweet. And, as much as Jobs touts the widespread use of iOS, there are still other users on different operating systems and platforms that may gravitate elsewhere.
Either way, Twitter has been handed a huge seal of approval by Apple. It will be interesting to see how consumers use the new Twitter, how Facebook evolves to keep up and how consumers respond to being surrounded by flocks of chirping birds.
