Why Apple is Dating Twitter to Get Back at Facebook

An article by Jonah Balfour    3 Comments

Post written by Jonah Balfour

I’m still digesting the massive amount of announcements that Steve Jobs and Apple dropped at their recent WWDC keynote, but I was particularly interested in the new built-in Twitter integration that is part of iOS 5. There had been word about this shortly before the keynote so it wasn’t really a surprise to me, nor was it a particularly ground breaking announcement. It’s awesome, to be sure, but the integration with Twitter feels to me like a logical progression for the OS. This isn’t a radical new concept; it’s simply the process of making Twitter a default option throughout the OS. It’s a necessary step for Apple as the whole industry seems to be concerned with the intersection of mobile and social. However, the question on my mind after the announcement was “why Twitter”, or more precisely, “why not Facebook?” I think the answer comes back to one word – onerous.

Let me take you back to just after Apple’s last major social announcement – Ping. This was Apple’s first foray into the social realm with what they described as a social network for music. The only thing truly remarkable about Ping was how unambitious it was. It felt like Apple wasn’t really trying, and a bit like they didn’t really want to try. Steve Jobs has said in the past that Apple doesn’t enter markets where it feels other people are doing a good job. This is why you won’t see an Apple search engine, or an Apple maps service. It’s also the reason we will never see an Apple social network. Apple would much rather work with Facebook and Twitter than compete against them.

So again, why Twitter and not Facebook? When Apple released Ping it had enabled Facebook connect. To find friends on Ping, users would simply need to connect with Facebook and voila – instant friends to share with. But the feature was disabled shortly after Ping launched due to what Steve Jobs described as “onerous terms that we could not agree to.”

The word onerous carries with it a powerful connotation, especially when it passes from the lips of Apple’s high priest and chief reality distorter. Steve Jobs doesn’t seem to me to be a man who is careless with his words, and I think he meant every negative connotation that the word implies. What it means is that he was pissed at Facebook. What do you get when you piss off Steve Jobs? You get the announcement of Twitter integration in iOS 5.

My reading of this move is a bit different than some Apple observers. John Gruber, for instance, views this as “stamp of approval” from Apple of Twitter. There is certainly truth to that and this is a unique move from Apple to integrate so closely with a third-party service. But Apple needs to become more social if it wants to continue to compete against Android and Windows Phone 7, both of which are moving towards tighter social integration.

I’m sure Apple likes Twitter, but Apple knows that the king of social right now is Facebook. The Ping story shows that up until now, if Apple wanted to work with Facebook they had to play by Facebook’s rules. I imagine that’s why the much talked about Facebook integration in iOS hasn’t materialized yet. Facebook is holding the cards right now in social and Apple doesn’t like what they see as Facebook’s onerous terms. So what does Apple do? It gives a huge boost to one of Facebook’s main challengers and tries to level the playing field a bit.

I still think some kind of partnership between Apple and Facebook is inevitable. The recent announcement with Twitter strikes me as even more evidence of that. But Apple wants to gain just a bit more leverage vis-à-vis Facebook before the partnership is formed.

Jonah Balfour has diverse experience in communications and journalism and honed his skills in marketing writing while working at SPEEDbit. Jonah is an avid fan of technology and social media with a special interest in all things Apple. Jonah currently works at Blonde 2.0 as a Community and Content Manager.