Twitter announced that Cover, the smart lock screen app, will join the team at Twitter. Cover lets you customize your lock screen by changing what is show depending on location and time. The app has garnered attention from thousands of beta testers and proves that your smartphone can be custom tailored to each users needs. The app will stay in the Play store for the time being, but in the near future could be pulled.
What this sounds like is Twitter wants to put its services front and center, and Cover may be the best way to do so. Facebook took this route with Facebook Home, but that app hasn’t really taken off. Twitter on the other hand is still a growing service, and could take advantage of the news that breaks on the site by putting it on your lock screen. The message is not clear on what the Cover team will work on at Twitter. “Twitter, like Cover, believes in the incredible potential of Android. They share our vision that smartphones can be a lot smarter — more useful and more contextual — and together we’re going to make that happen. We’ll be building upon a lot of what makes Cover great, and we’re thrilled to create something even better at Twitter.”
The lock screen is still an untapped area, considering only the time and a picture is shown. There could be important news, quick app selection, and other features if these apps start to take off. Twitter is a mobile company, with it generating a majority of ad dollars from mobile phones. If it can reach users every time they turn on their phones, the company could have a great way to advertise and provide a better way to access the service.
This is one of the lockscreens I really liked and it showed lots of potential. If Twitter loads it up with mainly twitter things to bloat the lockscreen I’m going to be somewhat upset.
I honestly think Twitter won’t mess with Cover, but instead have their own lock screen built like Facebook Home. Then they will phase out Cover from the Play store. I know Twitter didn’t play well with Tweetdeck so thats always one thing to consider too.