It is not news anymore to learn that the big players in Internet and Social Media are battling it out there, trying to buy new startups, making deals with each other and sometimes, breaking deals as well.
However, today seems to be a happy day and there seems to be less animosity in the air, in social media town. Twitter has just announced that they are ‘looking forward to iOS 5’ and that there would be a deep integration of Twitter in iOS 5. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey assured third party developers that the company stands behind them and that Twitter would like to know what additional materials or help they may need from Twitter.
Dorsey also mentioned that Twitter would be found everywhere an iPhone or an iPad would be found. There seems to be a tacit deal between Apple and Twitter to join hands to perhaps fight other competitors, for instance Google. It might be note worthy to remember that Twitter had snubbed Google and stopped giving access to its real time feed which used to be displayed in Google web search results. The new relationship with Apple seems to take Twitter to being a sort of credential checker. When you need to purchase an app from your iPhone, all that Apple would do is provide you with a single sign-on for Twitter, which would be used across Apple’s services to login.
Moreover, Apple too has taken several steps to integrate twitter into camera, Safari, Maps, videos YouTube and other services. This would allow you to tweet all your activity from your iPhone like it was just normal to do so. Dorsey may perhaps be working towards becoming the real-time communications layer for iOS apps, something that Facebook wants as well. With the amount of tacit support that Apple and Twitter are giving to each other, it should not come to us as a surprise if Facebook were sidelined.
While it may sound like Twitter and Apple or bracing themselves against Google and even Facebook perhaps, it also seems quite natural for the two companies to join hands together, as they both believe in minimalism, simplicity and a niche-audience which Google and Facebook don’t. One may argue that Twitter does not provide a niche, but it certainly has helped people to create a niche for themselves on the Internet than any other social media tool.
