Twitter to Acquire Cover, Popular Android Lock Screen App

Twitter has kicked its week off by acquiring an up-and-coming Android app, called Cover. As a lock-screen app, we're not quite sure what Twitter plans on doing to exploit its full potential, but given the fact that the app has 26,000 ratings on the Play Store for an average of 4.4/5.0 stars, we're sure there are many fans hoping that it's not going to go downhill. Better Twitter than Facebook though, right?

Cover's claim-to-fame is that it allows you to quickly "peek" into open apps, and switch between them quickly. It's contextual-based, so the more you use an app, the more likely it is to appear on your lock screen. If you happen to use a certain app more in the evening than any other time of day, then it'll bump it to the top of the list at around that time.

So what, then, does Twitter see in such an app? It could be that it's hoping to take on Facebook Home to some small degree, and make Twitter the first thing people see when engaging their phone. But again, when an app has an established fanbase, great care must be taken when updating it, else people are just going to flock to the next big thing. Fortunately for Twitter, the market for lock-screen apps isn't huge, but even so, care must be taken.

Terms of the acquisition have not been revealed, but its founders and Twitter alike are excited. Jeff Seibert, Twitter's Director of Mobile Platform said, "Couldn't be more excited to work with the @coverscreen team. Twitter is THE place for state-of-the-art mobile dev.".

And with this acquisition, I do believe I'll have to give Cover a try.