Saw tripling of signups on first day

Beyond the initial rush of Twitter signups that began when iOS 5 was first released, Apple's integration of its mobile OS with the social service is directly attributable to a boost in signups of 25 percent globally, the company announced at a news event today. The event, which also kicked off a redesign for mobile devices, announced other "state of the company" statistics.

In addition to crediting Apple with the uptick in monthly signups, Twitter officials also reiterated how the OS-level integration of Twitter into third-party applications had simplified and thus increased usage. Apple's own mobile apps, such as the built-in camera, can now tweet photos and captions directly to the service, without even the need to host the photo on a third-party server.

The company also announced it was up to 700 employees, and that its efforts and integrating advertising into the service had been well-received so far. Company officials said they've seen up to 50 percent response rates with some of Twitter's ad campaigns, and that the campaigns would expand into the mobile space soon.

In October, CEO Dick Costello had characterized the Apple/Twitter alliance as a "logical fit," saying that his company shared Apple's philosophy of focusing on delivering the best experience possible on its core objectives rather than trying to include everything a user might possibly want into an overburdened service. He characterized Google+ and Facebook as being in a constant race to top each other feature-wise, meaning that they often had to leave out key services on mobile devices.

Twitter, by contrast, can deliver its service to devices with very minimal requirements, even to feature phones as an example. Over the course of 2011, the company has seen the average number of "status updates" grow from 100 million per day to over 250 million, and as of October was receiving 3.7 billion hits per day to its non-mobile web site, up from 3.3 billion prior to the integration with iOS 5.

by MacNN Staff