Zune HD Twitter app now live UPDATE: it censors tweets!
It was a slow rollout today, but the promised Zune HD Twitter app is now live in Marketplace. We've been playing with it a little since we got it, and while it's definitely one of the more attractive mobile Twitter clients we've come across …
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft's promised Zune HD Twitter client lands in Marketplace after a slow rollout, and Engadget's first hands-on finds one of the more attractive mobile Twitter designs — with a catch: the app appears to filter out tweets rather than display them unfiltered. The timing matters because it coincides with Twitter officially unveiling its Contributors feature, a move to distinguish select accounts as part of a push to court big business.
That pairing frames the story: 2009's Twitter ecosystem runs on third-party clients, and platform makers are now shipping their own — each adding a layer of curation between the firehose and the user at exactly the moment Twitter itself is formalizing which voices count.
First-order effects
- Zune HD owners finally get a native Twitter client, but the reported tweet censoring means the app ships with a functional gap Engadget flagged on day one — users see less than the service actually delivers.
- Twitter gains another official-grade distribution point on a Microsoft device while simultaneously rolling out Contributors, tightening its control over both how and whose content reaches audiences.
Second-order effects
- If Microsoft's own client filters content by default, independent Zune developers have a differentiation opening — unfiltered access becomes a selling point against the built-in option.
- A censoring flagship client gives Twitter a quality-control problem on a partner platform: the company courting big business via Contributors now has a marquee mobile client that under-delivers the real-time stream brands pay attention to.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward platform-owned clients displacing the third-party apps that built Twitter's early mobile experience — with each owner (device maker or Twitter itself) deciding what gets through, shifting curation power from open APIs to shipped defaults.
- For Microsoft, a first-party social client that launches with filtering complaints tests whether Zune Marketplace can sustain a credible third-party app ecosystem at all — a prerequisite for any handheld competing on software rather than hardware.
The trend: Mobile Twitter is moving from a field of third-party clients to platform-controlled official apps, with content filtering decisions migrating to whoever ships the default.