Twitter Integration Coming to iOS 5

With WWDC and iOS 5 right around the corner, it appears that Apple will be focusing more on social integration. We’ve heard rumors of a ‘MediaStream‘ service from Apple that would allow you to view and share photos with your friends, and now it appears that Twitter will be integrated in iOS 5.

Instead of opening your favorite Twitter client to upload and share a photo, you could send a photo to Twitter directly from the iPhone’s Camera app…

TechCrunch,

“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.”

John Gruber, of DaringFireball, added an interesting comment,

“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.”

9to5Mac detailed a hidden iOS social network back in January that could be unveiled with iOS 5,

“From the looks of different alerts and plists, it appears that Apple will let iPhone users set up “Photo Streams” that friends could “subscribe” to. Also, it looks like there will be some privacy preferences related to this, so you can choose who is allowed to view your “Streams.”

With Photo Streams, you will also be allowed to “invite” other users to view your pictures as you take them and upload them to a service. This service looks like it is connected to MobileMe, and we speculate that “Media Stream” can be directly connected to “Find my Friends.” We think Find my Friends will be another aspect of Apple’s social network, a part of a free MobileMe, where you can choose to view your friends’ “Photo Streams” all on that same map.”

I think that Gruber is on to something with his comment. What’s to keep Apple from allowing Twitter integration on a deeper system level? The Next Web points out that Twitter could be used for contact integration with fellow Twitter users, social photo/media sharing, and integration with other iPhone apps.

Who knows, Apple may throw Facebook support in iOS 5 too.

What do you think? Are you excited to see Twitter integration in iOS 5?