The official Twitter for iPhone app is a solid way to get your tweets on the go but it hasn’t been as full-featured as some third-party apps. That’s slowly starting to change, as the official iPhone app is now getting push notifications for mentions.
Whenever someone gives is trying to reach out to you on the service, the official iPhone app will send you a push notification. This can already be found on the official BlackBerry app.
This could be a good way to keep your tweets organized on the go but this could also be very, very annoying if you get a lot of mentions. In fact, can we all just agree that the iPhone’s push-notification system is all kinds of weak?
I get that it’s somewhat necessary because the iPhone couldn’t multitask but the iOS 4.0 alleviates a few of those concerns. I’m not against a notification system in general, but this one is just so intrusive and ugly that I’m surprised Apple hasn’t gotten rid of it yet. I much prefer how Android or webOS handle notifications.
With that aside, the micro-blogging service said:
In addition to @mentions, we’re also bringing push notifications for Messages to Twitter for iPhone, as we’ve already done with SMS and Twitter for Blackberry. We’re working hard to introduce this feature to Twitter for Android and Twitter for Windows Phone soon.
To turn on SMS notifications, go to twitter.com/devices and check the boxes under “Text message notifications.” You can change your notifications settings at any time. For example, text “set mentions all’ to turn on notifications for @mentions from everyone, rather than just those whom you follow, and ‘set mentions off’ to turn off @mentions notifications.
So, you can hit this iTunes link to download the app and let us know what your favorite client is to send and read tweets on the go.