Twitter is one of the largest social networking entities on the internet, and apparently the company wants to know which apps you’re using on your devices. To learn the apps that its users are using, Twitter is going to start shopping on them right on your device, according to a new blog post the company recently published. The announcement details how, from this point on, Twitter will use its mobile applications to essentially snoop other apps on a device. This data will apparently allow Twitter to better provide “tailored content,” within your stream: According to a report published by Re/code following the announcement, Twitter’s tentacles into other apps is only at surface level. Meaning, while this data collection will be able to showcase to Twitter that a user has, say, Rdio installed on their device, the company will not be able to learn what songs the user listens to. So, Twitter will be able to learn the names of apps on a specific device, but not, exactly, what that app is being used for. This new tactic is opt-out. What that means is that Twitter is going to begin collecting this information from users’ devices automatically. If a user does not want this data collected, they will have to go out of their way to opt-out. The update to the Android app is set to arrive in the coming weeks.
