With reports of an Apple investment in Twitter circulating after a New York Times piece last week, a second report on Wednesday claims the talks were simply about "future product integration" instead.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that talk of an Apple investment in Twitter were overblown and never progressed "into serious discussions or negotiation," according to people familiar with the matter.
Last Friday, The New York Times reported Apple was interested in a huge investment in Twitter, which was quickly debunked as old news, given that the talks took place more than a year ago. The investment chatter instead turned to how the two companies might tie their products together.
Indeed, the talks came to fruition with the integration of Twitter into iTunes and iOS 5, and most recently with OS X Mountain Lion, the latest Mac operating system released in late July. And there may yet be more to come from the two companies.
"Apple and Twitter remain tight and continue to talk about future product integrations," the WSJ report reveals. "They include more deeply melding Twitter and iTunes, according to two people briefed on the matter. Apple is preparing to phase out its own troubled social network for iTunes, called Ping, later this year. iTunes users can currently link their Twitter and Ping accounts together to do things like find people they follow on Twitter on Ping."
The report notes that the Apple-Twitter mashup "came together very quickly," particularly when Cupertino failed to partner up with social networking giant Facebook -- a deal that will finally come to fruition this fall in both iOS 6 and also a software update to OS X Mountain Lion.
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