Official Twitter app for Windows Phone 7 goes live (update: hands-on)
Surprise of surprises! On the day that Europeans finally got to dig into the Windows Phone 7 cake in earnest, Twitter's official app for the hot new platform has also gone live. We've downloaded it to our own WP7 device …
Context & Ripple Effects
Windows Phone 7 reached European buyers on October 21, and Twitter marked the day by shipping its own official client for the platform — a launch-day arrival that echoes its December 2009 push onto Microsoft hardware with the Zune HD Twitter app, which drew scrutiny over tweet filtering. For Microsoft, it is a visible piece of the launch-app story alongside the Xbox Live launch titles revealed back in August.
The pattern across both devices is that Twitter is now treating Microsoft's consumer platforms as first-class distribution, shipping official clients rather than leaving the platform to third-party developers.
First-order effects
- European WP7 buyers get an official Twitter client from day one, and Microsoft's young Marketplace gains one of the most-demanded social apps without waiting on third parties.
Second-order effects
- Third-party Twitter clients built for WP7 are pushed into competing with a free, official, pre-installed-caliber alternative — the same squeeze the Zune HD release foreshadowed — while rival mobile platforms face pressure to secure equivalent official clients before their next launches.
Third-order effects
- If official-first becomes Twitter's default posture, mobile platforms will increasingly be judged at launch by whether marquee services ship native clients, making big social networks gatekeepers of perceived platform readiness rather than neutral API consumers.
The trend: Mobile platforms are launching only as complete as their marquee third-party clients, pushing major services like Twitter to ship official apps on day one of each new OS.