Apple has never been known to sit around and hope a project or relationship works. Expect a highly polished marketing campaign to get users tweeting. With time, this arranged marriage may just prove synergistic. And in the long run, according to social media expert Jeff Bullas, Apple will essentially have gotten itself its very own social network. For free.
Why not build a relationship instead with Facebook and its stated over 500 million active users? “Apple and Facebook actually have several conflicting strategic objectives,” said Joe Wilcox of Beta News. According to Wilcox, Apple tends to move information between and into devices, while Facebook typically works to take your content and place it in their servers. While Facebook is a more closed environment based on cloud-based ad revenue, Twitter has a history of having a much more open API model, more closely aligned to Apple’s app design and sharing model.
I’m sure the news of Apple’s new-found relationship got Google’s attention, as they continue to try and figure out a way to properly socialize their network of popular features.
If you have a Twitter account and use it, expect to see a few more information-savvy neighbors in your neck of the woods, as more and more iPhone and iPad app users see the Tweet button among popular sharing options such as email, print, and add to home screen. Bullas predicts Twitter will increase its member base by 100 million users in the year following iOS 5’s release.