Twitter's iOS Integration and What This Means for Developers | Hacker News Reader

Twitter's iOS Integration and What This Means for Developers

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38 pointshornokplease32 comments

Am I in the minority in thinking Twitter integration in iOS is not a good idea? I already hate most tweets that come from apps (like people tweeting every single song that comes on their Pandora, please stop doing this everyone).

If iOS apps are going to decrease the already really bad signal/noise ratio that Twitter has, then I really hope Twitter responds by giving us more control over what tweets we see (similar to how Facebook lets us hide apps/users/specific posts, etc)

Maybe I'm missing some secret to twitter or something...but if you think someone is tweeting annoying or useless stuff, couldn't you just unfollow them?

That's a pretty clunky solution though. Most prolific tweeters tweet both useful and "fluffy" stuff. I'd like to be able to filter out the fluff and still see the quality tweets. And still yet for other users (mostly close friends), I like to see the fluffy stuff. So far I feel Facebook has solved this problem fairly well, and Twitter hasn't even begun to address it.

I agree. There's also the social stigma of unfollowing. Most folks wouldn't unfollow a close friend, their boss, or a new client they're trying to woo.

Facebook has done more to alleviate this problem than Twitter with the default newsfeed being an algorithmically curated one (Top News) rather than the full firehose (Most Recent) and their hide functionality. I've always found hiding on Facebook could be more useful. Hiding a single update feels pointless. Hiding everything from a friend is rarely required. All that leaves is hiding an app, assuming their update came from one. That's where content-based filtering tools like http://slipstre.am/ (disclosure: my app) and http://proxlet.com/ excel, even though they're Twitter-only.

Which makes me realize that I haven't seen any Twitter clients allowing you to filter out tweets by app. The info is provided through the API, so it'd be pretty easy to do.

(NB: I haven't tried a whole lot of client so that might be out there, it's at least not very common)

Second thought on the subject: what identifier will tweets from iOS have? It sounds like iOS will have Twitter at the OS level, so it's likely that it will be the same client ID/name for all tweets regardless of if they're coming from Safari, the Photo app or anything else. In fact, the keynote made it look like you needed the official Twitter iOS app, so it's likely to be that app ID/name.

http://proxlet.com/ lets you do this. It's not a Twitter client, it's an API proxy, most prominently used in a Chrome extension for Twitter.com. I built something very similar with http://slipstre.am/ though without client filtering. In 6 months, no one has asked for it. Pattern filtering seems to be good enough (e.g. block tweets containing "4sq.com" vs. tweets from the "Foursquare" app).

"[redacted]"

(kidding, it's actually "iOS")

This is why I built http://slipstre.am/ but honestly there doesn't seem to be a lot of demand for this. Even on Facebook, where the feature has existed for a while, the average user I've talked to was never even aware of it.

I'm guessing part of this deal must give Apple the right of first refusal if there is an offer to acquire Twitter. The last thing Apple wants is another heavily integrated Google product.

I doubt it - but they may have first refusal on any ponzi bitcoins

(the real answer is, no, that is ridiculous)

I can't stand bitcoin, but Twitter is a good social media service.

No better or worse than any other service out there.

The follow-graph feature sounds neat, and is something I hadn't considered when wondering how direct Twitter integration could make iOS more interesting. Every iOS app now gets a baseline level of "social" functionality, for "free".

This was one of the most interesting announcements today. It made me wonder, "why not Ping?"

It sounds like Apple realizes that Ping is DOA. And given their frosty relationship with Facebook, they're left with Twitter.

It's probably important to note that if you're really banking on your app going viral via Twitter, it's only prudent to gracefully degrade to the current XAuth method for tweeting since it will be quite some time before most iOS devices have native Twitter.

That said, this could really be a big help in encouraging users to share content from your apps.

Is this a virtual or on-location event? (couldn't see that specified anywhere)

It will be at the Twitter office: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/msg/...

Any way to participate remotely? I won't be in SF that day unfortunately.

I don't surf logged in, and being offered a Google Groups login when expecting an article is jarring. Perhaps "login required" links ought to be indicated.

I just opened the url in incognito to see and it loaded fine. No where did it ask me to log in.

Your experience will differ on Google, depending on what cookies you have.

Some of us are 'partially logged in' and it's asking for a password. No doubt you may not be affected.

Strange, just deleted all Google-related cookies, am not signed in, and do NOT get prompted to.

I think what he's saying is if Google leaves cookies on your computer that contain your userid, but you're not logged in (similar to trying to access Google Apps Administration or your own Google user account settings where it always prompts for a password) then it will prompt you to fully log in.

Ahh that makes sense, thanks.

I'd REALLY like to know what possessed Apple to go with Twitter and not Facebook. When I want to share a picture, I want to share it through Facebook, NOT Twitter.

Weirdly, when I want to share a photo, I want to share it through Twitter and not Facebook. I realize I'm in the minority, but it's a growing minority, and was probably a much better deal to negotiate.

I'm confused as to why you even have to negotiate a deal. My Android phone has options for both Facebook and Twitter when you 'share' a photo- any app can plug into the API.

Looking back to Apple's supposed failed attempt to partner with Facebook with their Ping service, this doesn't surprise me.

It's probably something political, or maybe even technical (such as handling permissions?). Either way, as a user I completely agree that heavy Facebook integration would be more compelling.

They could have just allowed any app to integrate with the OS. That's why I loved my BlackBerry, any app could add a handler to the OS's context menu for a given item.

They could similarly expose intents like Android does as well.

i'd say that is more Facebook than Apple, fb refused ping. and fb are part of the Microsoft keiretsu

There's a big problem here, downtime. Twitter is very unreliable. But i suspect they plan to acquire them.

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