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Twitter may already have an app for Google Glass

If a now-deleted tweet was for real, it suggests that a Twitter app for Glass may already be in the wild. Look for lots of photos soon taken "#throughglass."

Daniel Terdiman Former Senior Writer / News
Daniel Terdiman is a senior writer at CNET News covering Twitter, Net culture, and everything in between.
Daniel Terdiman
2 min read
Google co-founder Sergey Brin modeling Google Glass. A now-deleted tweet suggests that Twitter may have already built an app for the wearable computing device. James Martin/CNET

If a now-deleted tweet is to be believed, Twitter may already have created an app for Google Glass.

That's TechCrunch's conclusion, at least, as the technology news site has a story up this afternoon positing that someone may already have sent a tweet from an obviously as-yet-unannounced Twitter app for Google Glass.

In the photo that's embedded in the above tweet, it is possible to see that the tweet (assuming it actually existed) was sent from an app called Twitter for Glass. Since the tweet itself has been deleted, we'll never know for sure -- at least not unless or until Twitter actually releases such an app. On the other hand, the link to the photo itself still exists, even if the photo itself doesn't -- it resolves to a Twitter error page, but you can see the URL -- suggesting that at the very least, TechCrunch hasn't had its leg totally pulled.

In its article, TechCrunch pointed to recent comments made by uber-venture capitalist John Doerr at the announcement for a group called the Glass Collective. Doerr, apparently, was heard to have dropped hints that it was just a matter of time before Twitter put out an app for Glass.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

What's notable about the tweet -- if it was real -- is that it was just a photograph and what one can imagine is stock language, "Just shared a photo #throughglass." That makes sense since Glass wouldn't necessarily make it easy to add text to a tweet. But it would be ideal for sharing photographs from events, walks, stores, or with friends.

The challenge for Twitter, and others jumping on Glass, is adapting to the voice and tap interface. Taking a picture with Glass and tweeting it is a relatively simple function of setting the Twitter app up for the device. But Twitter is primarily a text input service, tapped on the keyboard. Now the service is starting to branch out, and Glass may present its users with new use cases, such as video "tweets" from Vine and audio tweets with a limited time span, a kind of parallel to the 140-character limit. Presumably, users could also dictate tweets to Glass, with some feedback on how many characters of the 140-character limit are left, and ways to add links to the tweet. But voice recognition has clear limitations, so if you see someone wearing Glass muttering to themselves and getting increasingly frustrated, it may be a safe bet that they're trying to navigate some sort of system like that.

CNET's Dan Farber contributed to this report.