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Twitter Is Exploring New Ways For Android Users To Discover Tweets, Says Product VP Michael Sippey
Facebook boldly moved to expand its presence in the mobile space with its Android-only replacement last week (with mixed results), but it’s far from the only company who has shown interest in Google’s mobile OS as a springboard for better social connection.
Speaking at the D: Dive Into Mobile, recently installed Twitter VP of product Michael Sippey seemed intrigued by the sorts of experiences others have been able to build on top of Android and confirmed that the company has been mulling over how to improve the process of using Twitter on Android.
“There are a lot of things we’re looking at on Android to make it easier to discover tweets,” Sippey remarked in response to an audience question. He went on to mention that he finds Facebook Home to be “a very interesting product,” and that he “would like to see tweets there.”
As you might expect, Sippey wouldn’t say anything further about what sorts of Android-centric Twitter experiences employees have been fiddling with behind closed doors. He did however point out the importance of Twitter’s internal hack weeks, quarterly events that see cross-disciplinary come together to jam on some interesting projects. Rough though they may be at first, some of those hacks have grown into full-fledged features that have ultimately been baked into Twitter proper (downloadable tweet archives are probably the most notable example).
Given the role that these sorts of wild-eyed hacks can have when it comes to product development — The Verge’s Ellis Hamburger points out that Facebook Messenger’s Chat Heads began as once such “late night hack” — it wouldn’t be surprise to learn that some of Twitter’s potential Android enhancements came about thanks to this internal drive to occasionally cobble things together en masse. For now Twitter is more than happy to keep these cards close to their collective chests, but Sippey stated that the team wants to “build the best Twitter” they can, and taking a tighter approach to integrating into an immensely popular mobile OS wouldn’t be the worst move Twitter could make.
