Tim Cook again says Apple could work more with Facebook, says to ‘stay tuned’

Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at the All Things D Conference today in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. At the conference, Cook repeated his sentiments from earlier in the year when queried about Apple integrating with Facebook, saying to ‘stay tuned’.

Cook had this to say after being queried about Facebook integration:

They have their own way of doing things. But people can say that about us as well. But just because you have different views doesn’t mean you can’t work together. We want to provide customers simple, elegant ways to do the things they want to do. And Facebook has hundreds of millions of customers. And anyone with iPhone or iPad wants to have the best experience with Facebook on any device. So stay tuned.

At a shareholder’s meeting in February, Cook also addressed the issues surrounding Apple’s iOS integrating Twitter, but not Facebook. Cook said that he thought of the company as a ‘friend’. “We do a lot with them, our users use Facebook an enormous amount. I’ve always thought the two companies could do more together,” said Cook.

Cook said at that meeting that integrating the service has been “great for Twitter”, but also “great for our users.”

The deep integration with iOS has benefited Twitter in a quantifiable way, with CEO Dick Costolo saying that the service’s signups are up 25% worldwide since the release of iOS 5.

Evidence of Facebook integration into Apple products including iOS 5  —  and even back to iOS 4 — were found in pre-release software, but when the final product was revealed, it was Twitter that had scored the integration, not Facebook. Twitter scored a huge win there, basically scoring an immortality clause for the service. And there was a lot of talk about Apple and Facebook butting heads over the use of the API for Ping sharing and how that caused a lot of friction.