Did Apple Really Want Deep Facebook Integration in iOS 5 Alongside Twitter?

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The deep integration of Twitter in iOS 5 was certainly one of the major talking points when Apple launched iOS 5 at WWDC last week, with much speculation around the question of why one of the other major social network players, Facebook, appeared to have been left out in the cold by Apple. Was it a deliberate snub by Apple, and how would Twitter’s cosy new relationship with Apple affect Facebook, if at all? And so on and so forth. Now today TechCrunch has a very interesting story that sheds a little more light on the matter, even going so far as to suggest that Apple may really have wanted deep Facebook integration with iOS 5 all along, and that it was not its choice to exclude the social network.

TechCrunch’s story provides as evidence a video of an iOS 4 test build from this past April, which shows, at 1:03, the Facebook icon in the Settings screen, with no sight of any Twitter icon whatsoever. In fact, as TechCrunch notes, the Facebook icon is actually in the same place in the iOS 4 beta as the Twitter is in the iOS 5 beta. Of course Facebook integration with iOS has long been speculated on in the media, so this is nothing new, but as TechCrunch goes on to say, Facebook’s no-show in iOS 5 could be more Facebook’s doing than Apple’s. TechCrunch points to the example of Facebook’s negotiations with Apple regarding planned integration with Apple’s Ping and OS X Lion, which broke down due to what Steve Jobs referred to as Facebook’s “onerous terms.” Maybe the same thing happened regarding Facebook’s integration in iOS 5? We may never know, but either way, Twitter is presumably very happy that it doesn’t have to share it’s iOS 5 position with Facebook, whatever the reason.

Source: TechCrunchSigns Of What Could Have Been: iOS Hooked Up With Facebook Before Marrying Twitter