Twitter CEO Dick Costolo
Twitter has only just begun to see the effects of its integration with iOS 5, the newest version of Apple’s mobile operating system. But just days after iOS 5′s debut last week, the microblogging startup has already gotten a major lift from the big partnership.
“The iOS integration is going to be absolutely huge for us,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said in an on-stage conversation with John Battelle at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco Monday evening. “It’s going to be even better than we thought it would be.”
Indeed. Twitter saw its daily signups for the service via iOS devices such as the iPhone and the iPad go up more than three times on the first day of iOS 5′s availability October 12, Costolo said. That could mean that the company will see growth that augments its already impressive expansion: Twitter is currently processing more than 250 million tweets per day and has more than 100 million global active users, more than half of which log in every day.
More than anything, though, Twitter is looking to Apple as a mentor of sorts in its aim to focus on delivering one service, and one service only. “Those guys [at Apple] are an amazing partner for us. When they think about products and enhancing products they think about editing them,” Costolo said. “[At Twitter] we’re going to offer simplicity in a world of complexity… they’re a corporate mentor to us.”
The major difference, of course, is that Apple is generating record revenues and profits, while Twitter has yet to start to even cover its own costs. But if the company can manage to turn a profit while keeping its focus, Twitter could be turn out to be a big business after all.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
- Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce
- NewNet Q2: Google closes the quarter with a bang
- A 2011 NewNet Forecast
