Both Daring Fireball and TechCrunch are reporting that Apple’s iOS 5, the next major software release for Apple’s mobile devices, will integrate Twitter (and most likely Facebook, with possibly other social services) at the system-level, offering up unique social experiences beyond just simple photo-sharing. TechCrunch has heard:
We’ve heard from multiple sources that Twitter is likely to have a big-time partner for such a service: Apple. Specifically, we’re hearing that Apple’s new iOS 5 will come with an option to share images to Twitter baked into the OS. This would be similar to the way you can currently share videos on YouTube with one click in iOS. Obviously, a user would have to enable this feature by logging in with their Twitter credentials in iOS. There would then be a “Send to Twitter” option for pictures stored on your device.
Though Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber adds the cayenne pepper on top of the original report:
So close to the bigger story, but yet so far. Imagine what else the system could provide if your Twitter account was a system-level service.
We’ll all see how this shakes out in under a week from now.