Rumor: GM's OnStar to possibly support Twitter
A recent OnStar survey may have leaked the future addition of Twitter to GM's in-car connectivity service.
- North American Car, Truck and SUV of the Year (NACTOY) Awards Juror
Most Twitter addicts have been guilty of stoplight tweeting (an epic race against the clock to squeeze in 140 characters before the light turns green), but if recent rumors are true, General Motors is going to make TWD (Twittering While Driving) much safer if they integrate the Twitter microblogging service into OnStar.
The rumor originates with a blogger at Gear Live. While filling out an OnStar survey, he noticed this tidbit:
"While in your vehicle, you can use OnStar to submit and retrieve tweets (messages) via your Twitter account. Using OnStar's Voice-Activated Hands-Free Calling system, and having your voice converted into text, you can provide updates which would appear in the "What are you doing?" section of your Twitter homepage. It is also possible to listen to a tweet that was sent to you by someone else after it has been converted into voice. You can send and receive tweets without having to type or read anything."
Without the context of the rest of the survey, this could just be GM testing the waters for a pie-in-the-sky service. However, the speech-to-text and text-to-speech technology does exist, as does the in-vehicle connectivity.
The hypothetical addition of Twitter may not be the sort of killer app that would save GM, but any boost to the ailing automaker's cabin tech suite certainly couldn't be harmful.