A deep integration of Twitter and iOS 5 was among the many things announced by Apple today but it’s not just that you’ll be able to post to Twitter from inside official Apple apps like photos and maps. Any 3rd party iOS developer will be able to leverage a number of Twitter Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to make their apps better and more social. After email, SMS and iOS messaging, Twitter will now become a key social layer over the top of many of the apps on iOS devices.
The features that app developers will have access to closely resemble what other platforms make possible with Facebook integration, and Twitter’s being the one to land this deal is a pretty big deal for the world’s 2nd place social network. Twitter Developer Relations leader Jason Costa wrote this afternoon on the Twitter developers email list that the points of integration will “create huge opportunities for both Twitter and iOS developers.” Here’s what that might look like.