So it turns out Twitter wants to be the mobile developer's best friend after all. The company was noted for not reaching out to developers with quite the same gusto as other digital media companies --
so Fabric is a departure down a road that will likely see closer ties and, you would imagine, developer conferences and so on.
The launch of Fabric is being seen as Twitter making a huge play to
make it the "go-to" brand for developing reliable multi-device apps. There is a lot of truth in this, but talk of it becoming the Google of Mobile -- as one commentator has postulated -- is probably a
little premature.
The ability for brands to include Twitter functions within branded apps will prove a great way to encourage people to act as if they were on Twitter but within a third-party
app -- presumably people will be able to like, share, retweet and follow on Brand X's app just as if they were on Twitter's. That's a nice step forward users will appreciate.
What this really
is all about, in my honest opinion, is getting MoPub embedded as the default mobile advertising network for app developers. If by using Twitter's tools mobile app developers just simply have to tick a
box to make their inventory biddable on MoPub, then why wouldn't they? It's a little like finding Apple preferred apps pre-loaded on your iPhone or Google features on your start page when you unbox an
Android phone.
A spoonful of sugar always helps the proverbial medicine go down, and so providing a suite of useful tools would appear to be the carrot to get developers to turn to
MoPub.
It ought to be remembered, of course, that Twitter surprised a few people last year when it bought Crashlytics. Having the tools to help developers debug mobile applications now
makes perfect sense, and will almost certainly be one of the biggest attractions for mobile developers taking up the Fabric development kit.
But let's not make any bones about it. This isn't
Twitter trying to be the default mobile app platform, nor is it a PR stunt to bridge a gap between the social network and developers who have perhaps labelled the service as a little over-controlling
in the past.
Fabric is all about giving mobile app developers a helping hand in making their apps more stable in return, Twitter will undoubtedly hope, for linking those apps' inventories to
MoPub.