Twitter might be just a micro-blogging site, but it has been effective enough to compete with giants in the social networking loop. One might even notice that its mobile connections are even on the rise. Twitter seems to resume the social network wars as its integration with Apple will lead to more tweets a day as compared to its current activeness.
Michael Abbott, vice president of engineering at Twitter, confirmed that its integration with Apple and iOS 5 on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch would help in increasing a lot more Tweet production on mobile. He noted the above point while speaking at GigaOM’s Mobilize 2011 summit in San Francisco on Tuesday. Abbott was excited thinking about what developers would work out with this integration. He even said that it would help in having a better user experience. User experience would be the key factor for Twitter as it needs to keep it unified, if possible across each and every platform, may it be the desktop browser, mobile browser, Android or iOS apps, or integration in other programs.
For its activeness on Twitter, Abbott noted that the micro-blogging giant had grown at a rate of 82 percent this year since the beginning. Twitter even has an active user list of more than 100 million, the point stands to be justified.
To detail about the user-focused interaction models, Abbott reiterated that Twitter is developing such models, which have their focus on enabling and surfacing tweets that might be relevant to a particular user. To bifurcate it from clicking on hashtags, it can be noted that this step would make curated tweets based on a unique profile on Twitter. It would be handy for those mobile users which has an extension to the smartphone or tablet’s GPS functions.
Abbott briefed an example noting the effect of following something like a local fire department. In this case, a resident might be following the local fire department, but a tourist might not be a follower of that local area where he is visiting. However, if there is fire at a place, both characters in this case would want the services of the local fire department. This example was noted to detail that Twitter is working on ways to try to bring this information to the user more easily. He further said, “I appreciate information coming to me rather than having to go find it.”
Abbott stressed that Twitter is a lot more different from Facebook and others, as they are not a social network, but an information network. Such distinguishing features separate Twitter from the competition.
Abbott even had notes to say about their experience with webOS, as he had led the software and service team at Palm that designed webOS from 2008 to 2010. he said, “It’s disappointing to see some of the changes, What remains to be seen is what they’re going to do with the software.” He however appreciated the job done by the team to achieve a lot in a short span of time with the OS. Specially the notifications and multi-tasking on webOS, as they were particularly novel features.
There was even a question thrown at Abbott by GigaOM’s founder Om Malik, who asked him about a buyer for webOS, Abbott laughed briefly but left without an answer. He said, “The landscape is changing so dramatically in that space, it’s hard to say.”