One of the things promised in the Mango update for Windows Phone was native twitter integration. Much like Facebook and Windows Live services are in the mix now, it is sadly not included in the Mango Beta that was released to devs recently. Twitter has had a phenomenal rise to popularity, and would probably be the most preferred short messaging service for people with Smartphones on the planet. The way that Facebook is interwoven into the OS, and chatting online is so fluid, I would hope to see the Twitter inclusion as amenable. Well it seems that testing is well underway, according to some Tweets picked up on by Tom over at Winrumors.
It’s likely that Microsoft is testing the feature on an updated build of Windows Phone Mango or by using developer devices. Windows Phone developer devices allow owners to switch to Windows Live Internal domains to use dogfood features. WPCentral notes that the Twitter messages appear as “via Windows Phone (via Windows Live)” for the Twitter source application. Clicking on the link will redirect you to Microsoft’s Windows Phone site. Previously builds of Mango said “via Windows Phone(via Windows Live)INT.”
While this is tentative and we won’t see it till Mango is officially released, understanding the potential of publicly available services and including them natively in Windows Phone, should be a winner for Microsoft, if they can roll it out fast enough. It’s a value add if you can just log in from your phone without having to download an application, and will offer new users another level of customisation within the OS, that may prove valuable for marketing it. Hopefully, the inclusion will also allow you to add Twitter contacts and info to your people hub as well!
