Apple and Twitter have had an interesting but cautious relationship over the past couple of years. Early on, the only official Apple accounts belonged to various iTunes properties, which utilized the service for promotions. Then Apple secured a deal with Twitter for Ping, their social network within iTunes. Then some Twitter executives starting joining in on the fun (though some more vocally then others). Now it appears that Apple is taking another step into official Twitter land today with an account for the App Store.
About an hour ago, the first tweet was sent from the account saying, “Welcome to App Store on Twitter! Follow us to discover new apps, get exclusive offers, and share with friends. #appstore“. Looking over the vitals, the account has about 3,000 followers at the moment, but is only following 5 users — all iTunes official accounts. And while the App Store account isn’t yet verified, Twitter has altered their practice of doing that, so we’ll have to take the fact that both iTunes TV and iTunes Music are following the account as a sign that it’s legit (we’ve also reached out to Twitter about it).
The idea of sending out special App Store deals via Twitter sounds interesting. Might that mean that Apple will also become a Promoted Products advertiser on the service?
Either way, there’s certainly an appetite for App Store info on Twitter, as an unofficial account has over 70,000 followers.
Welcome to App Store on Twitter! Follow us to discover new apps, get exclusive offers, and share with friends. #appstore—
App Store (@AppStore) January 24, 2011
Update: And here’s a second tweet from the account that just hit:
Motivation. Full-body workouts. On-demand instruction. It’s all available on Nike Training Club. http://tw.appstore.com/4zo #appstore
In case you’re wondering, yes, Apple does own appstore.com. It currently redirects to an Apple 404 page.
It looks like the self-promotion has begun!
Update 2: Twitter has gotten back to us saying that we’ll have to ask Apple about the account, that they can’t comment for privacy reasons.
But iTunes TV and iTunes Music (both verified Twitter accounts) has just now retweeted the App Store initial tweet. So yes, it’s legit — and gaining users, fast.
Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook Air) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod, the...
Created in 2006, Twitter is a global real-time communications platform with 400 million monthly visitors to twitter.com, more than 200 million monthly active users around the world. We see a billion tweets every 2.5 days on every conceivable topic. World leaders, major athletes, star performers, news organizations and entertainment outlets are among the millions of active Twitter accounts through which users can truly get the pulse of the planet.
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