Twitter founder Jack Dorsey just posted a note to third-party Twitter developers, asking for feedback. He writes: We want to know what additional materials you need from us to help you build products, boost distribution and expand your reach.
What’s interesting about the post is that it mentions that “Very soon, anywhere there’s an iPhone or an iPad, you’ll always find Twitter.” He’s referring to Twitter’s deep integration in iOS 5. He writes: With Apple’s upcoming deep integration of Twitter into iOS 5, there is an opportunity for us, together, to take the ecosystem to a new level.
Here are some details from our post on Apple and Twitter’s announcement earlier this year: Apple will provide a single sign-on for Twitter use on the phone, and with any app you download, it will just ask you for Twitter credential permission. There’s no need to re-login.
Apple has taken it a step further to integrate Twitter into many of its own features and applications like camera and photos. You can also Tweet articles and content directly from Safari, Maps, videos from YouTube, etc and add location as well. And Twitter photos and @usernames can be autopulled into the phone’s contacts. You can see screenshots here.
In his note, Dorsey is saying is that Twitter and Apple iOS are now joined at the hip and that any iPhone or iPad app can integrate deeply with Twitter. Dorsey wants to become the realtime communications layer for iOS apps, which is a highly coveted position (and one that Facebook may want too). And what better way to take this position than to create network of third-party apps building with Twitter for iOS.
It’s important to mention that Twitter has had a tenuous relationships with its developers. In March, Twitter basically told developers to avoid competing with them on native clients. It’s not that Twitter doesn’t want developers to build off their platform, they just don’t want developers to build clients that mimic Twitter’s own services.
As we’ve written in the past, this is business, not personal. But the FTC reportedly is making inquiries about whether the company’s developer policies are anti-competitive.
Clearly the tone of this note is more inviting and collaborative, and Twitter is trying to make nice with third-party developers as the integration with iOS 5 debuts.
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