With iOS 5 going live yesterday evening, Apple’s partnership with Twitter saw complete support for the microblogging service built into the new release, enabling seamless media sharing and easy retrieval of login credentials via both the Twitter app and the large number of third-party Twitter applications on the App Store.
Before the new Apple software went live, Twitter released its improved iOS app. Version 3.5.0 shipped with an enhanced sign up experience, full integration of Twitter’s picture service (pic.twitter.com), as well as an updated Direct Message design for iPad which sorts direct messages in chronological order as well as by thread.
With the update hitting handsets, the Twitter app immediately set users’ default image service to pic.twitter.com, replacing user preferences in previous updates – an unfortunate consequence of Twitter’s plan to see new users begin using its own service from the minute they download the application.
However, if a user attempts to revert back to a rival service on an iOS device – say yFrog, Twitpic, Mobypicture or another host – the official Twitter application is unable to post images, bringing up the following error:
The issue has been replicated on different iPhone devices, in different countries and on different carriers. Our early tests suggest that the problem lies in Twitter’s implementation of oAuth Echo and could be a result of a Twitter server-side error.
The issue appears to be a bug, not an intentional blocking of rival services. Fortunately for Twitter, users may only be able to share images via the company’s official image host until the problem is resolved.
We have reached out to Twitter for clarification, who have yet to reply to our correspondance. We will update the article once we receive a reply.
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