Twitter has acquired atebits, the company that makes popular Tweetie applications for the iPhone and Mac OS X. In so doing, the company is fortifying itself as a mobile communications service – that happens to have a web site you can also use.

Twitter has been radically open with the way it processes the small messages its users send, encouraging third-party developers to use that information to build applications that let people use the service more easily and in places and ways the company itself doesn't have the time or inclincation or expertise to do on its own. It's a classic crowdsourcing move.

Developers have taken that ball and run with it, with abandon. While it's possible to use Twitter purely in an SMS context – sending texts from your phone that go into your timeline, or as direct messages to others – and to use your Twitter web page, there have been a plethora of desktop and smartphone applications that have added functionality and friendly graphical interfaces. And it is via these that Twitter has spread like wildfire.

By far one of the most successful has been Tweetie, a $3 app in the Apple iTunes store that will now be free. Twitter says this plugs a big hole for the company, as iPhone users assumed they would be able to find an official iPhone app from Twitter and, when they didn't, sometimes left in a huff.

"Careful analysis of the Twitter user experience in the iTunes AppStore revealed massive room for improvement," Twitter said in a blog post. "People are looking for an app from Twitter, and they're not finding one. So, they get confused and give up. It's important that we optimize for user benefit and create an awesome experience."

We have long held that Twitter's web presence was entirely incidental to them as a business or a as service. When they added search to user home pages we shrugged, and when others cited web site visits to quantify the popularity and reach of Twitter, we laughed in their general direction.

Twitter itself acknowledges that mobile is where it's at: "Mobile has always been a focus for us—starting with SMS which lead to the 140 character limit."

Twitter is about whispering in Times Square at high noon and being heard around the world. The less friction there is to the process, the more sending Tweets becomes as easy as speed-dialing a mobile phone, the more it becomes part of the fabric of our everyday lives (for better or for worse). The Twitter web experience and desktop clients are mere accommodations to extend to increasingly peculiar places the overwhelmingly superior premise of mobile.

Loren Brichter, the man behind atebits, sounds like a kid who got the keys to the candy store as he makes this point: "Some amazing stuff will soon be possible, both in terms of simplifying the Twitter experience and in allowing people to use Twitter any place they might be. I’m really looking forward to the next generation of mobile clients, and hopefully the next time you hear from me it’ll be on the Twitter blog!

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