Twitter VP wants to see Facebook-Home-like presence on Android lock screens

NEW YORK CITY — When Facebook launched its Home skin for Android phones this past Friday, we wondered if Twitter — another powerful social network — might want in on the action. Twitter vice president of product Michael Sippey said today at the Dive into Mobile conference that he wants to see a greater presence for tweets on the Android lock screen like Home has.

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":717262,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"social,","session":"B"}']

“There are a lot of things we’re looking at on Android and across all of our applications to make it easier to see tweets,” Sippey said. “[Facebook Home] is a really interesting product experience. … I’d like to see tweets there [on the lock screen], so we’ll see how that goes.”

It would certainly be a fascinating development if Twitter were to create its own Android skin. But with Facebook Home getting highly negative reactions from Android users, we’re not sure Twitter would want to go down that road.

Sippey also tackled a few other topics. Here’s what he said:

On Twitter activity following the Boston Marathon explosions:

Sippey said that there were 200 times more usage of the word Boston and the usage of the word “help” was the highest it had been in 180 days.

He also said that false information being spread on Twitter was stomped out almost instantaneously.

On Twitter Music:

Twitter bought the company We Are Hunted so it could eventually launch Twitter Music, a new app for music discovery by Twitter. That app hasn’t publicly launched yet, and Sippey was shy on details. Still, he did say that Twitter Music would be its own experience

[aditude-amp id="medium1" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":717262,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"social,","session":"B"}']

“[We Are Hunted has] built an incredible app. Like Vine, it’s a purpose-built app,” he said.

On Vine:

Vine, the video-sharing app Twitter bought back in October is still being run as a separate in a separate office in New York City. Sippey explained that the Vine app is specialized and thus has its own laser-like focus.

“We fell in love with the product and fell in love with the team,” Sippey said. “We think it’s a different use case than Twitter but very complementary to what we’re doing … We support them with Twitter resources and give them the room to run.”

[aditude-amp id="medium2" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":717262,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"social,","session":"B"}']

On “muting” topics:

Sippey admitted that Twitter has considered giving users the ability to “mute” certain topics. So if someone doesn’t want to see a bunch of tweets, for example, about the MTV Video Music Awards, those tweets could be silenced from the river.

Photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat