Twitter To Track Third Party Apps On iOS

This article originally appeared on 60 Second Social.

Twitter has announced a new feature on its service called ‘app graph’ which will track the apps users have installed on their devices to suggest promoted content and potentially allow for enhanced timeline personalisation.

A post on Twitter’s official support page says that app graph will only gather a list of software installed on a users device and does not collect any data associated with those apps. However, for privacy advocates, the new feature may be somewhat of a concern.

Twitter says that app graph will help build a “tailored” experience for users such as improved, “who to follow” suggestions being presented. Other enhancements could be things like adding tweets to timelines and general content to your feed from accounts that you don’t follow which seems pretty intrusive.

Twitter is being transparent about how it plans to implement app graph which is soon going to roll out to users on its service. When the system is active for an account a prompt will be sent to the device saying, “to help tailor your experience, Twitter uses apps on your device.” This alert appears when app graph is turned on and active.

App graph will not collect apps for iOS users who opted out of target ads by using Apple’s “Limit Ad Tracking” feature where it is available. In order to use Twitter’s system you will need to turn this feature off first if you have it active.

If you want out of app graph at a later time there are some simple instructions provided by Twitter.

• From the Me tab, tap the gear icon
• Tap settings
• Tap the account you would like to adjust
• Under privacy, you can adjust the setting to tailor tweet based on my apps

Twitter has not mentioned when the feature will become active however you can expect it to hit soon now that Twitter has made it public.

About The Author

Mark is the founder of 60 Second Social media where he provides social media news and digital marketing analysis, he is also a proud father of his bearded dragon, Lola. You can follow him on Twitter here. You can also follow 60 Second Social on Twitter here.