Twitter will become even more integrated with iOS and OS X
In future versions of iOS and OS X, you will probably see more tweets than ever before. According a report from 9to5Mac, Twitter and Apple are working together to inject tweets into the Spotlight feature on iPhones, iPads, iPod touches, and Macs.
The news came out during Twitter’s most recent quarterly earnings call. A transcript of the call has Twitter CEO Dick Costolo commenting on the further integration of the social media service with iOS and OS X.
And finally, we are also working with Apple to surface great Twitter content and accounts directly in Spotlight Search on iOS and OS X, that also makes it easier and quicker to find great things on Twitter. So I would sum up by saying, there is absolutely an opportunity to go and monetize that attention and traffic. We want to make sure we iterate on the experiences to get them right first.
You can already use Spotlight on iOS and OS X to search for particular hashtags, but it sounds like there might be even more Twitter content coming to the onboard search platform. Apple has continually improved Spotlight’s ability to be a critical aspect of the Apple device experience, adding Bing Search and Wikipedia integration to help users find informative content straight from the operating system.
Apple began adding integration with Twitter in 2011, when iOS 5 released with built-in support for the social media platform. When Mountain Lion released in 2012, users found integrated Twitter support on the desktop.
Costolo hasn’t revealed when the Twitter Spotlight integration would appear, but it is possible that Apple will discuss Spotlight improvements at WWDC in June, when the company is expected to unveil iOS 9 and OS X 10.11.
