Twitter Acquires Cover, an Android Screen Locker - To Improve Its Mobile Services

 

Twitter has acquired Cover, an android screen locker app that lets you customise what apps you see and when. You can read more on how Cover works here.

“We’re excited to announce that we are taking a turn today as we bring the Cover team to Twitter to take these ideas even further” says on Cover blog post.

“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.”

Cover was founded by former Google employees and launched on an invitation-only basis in October. Cover displays the six apps on the Android lock screen that users are most likely to want to use, based on daily analysis of the user's smartphone habits and the current context (whether you're at home, work or driving somewhere). The app attracted "hundreds of thousands" of users prior to the acquisition.

“Since launching Cover in October, we’ve had the privilege of reaching hundreds of thousands of people. We’ve improved Cover with their help and feedback, and demonstrated how Android can help make people’s lives easier”

Facebook, one of Twitter's chief competitors, attempted to control the Android lock screen experience with the release of Facebook Home last year, though the app struggled to gain broad adoption. At the very least, the acquisition is evidence that Twitter is focused on continuing to improve the Android experience.

Purpose of this acquisition for twitter is to improve the business through mobile as mobile devices has become huge business for Twitter. Apart from the fact that Twitter was created as a mobile-first service, Twitter generates more in advertising from mobile than it does from desktop. Cover, meanwhile, says it has picked up “hundreds of thousands” of users since launching in October 2013.

“Cover will remain available in the Play Store while we focus our attention on our work at Twitter. If that changes down the road, we’ll provide another update here” says Cover founder.

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