iTweet: Apple joins the Twitter revolution — sort of

To the delight of some readers and the absolute dismay of others, the two companies I write about most are Apple and Twitter. So now, I’m happy to report that the two are finally overlapping. Apple has opened a Twitter account — or at least one small part of Apple has.

You see, Apple’s Twitter account is just for the movie trailers section of its site. This area, which has been around a long time, showcases many of the newest Hollywood movie trailers available in a variety of resolutions. It looks like the section was recently re-dubbed “iTunes Movie Trailers,” and so its Twitter handle is iTunesTrailers.

While there was some question as to whether or not this account was really sanctioned by Apple, if you look on the iTunes Movie Trailers site now, you will see not one, but two links to “Trailers on Twitter,” as CNET points out. One is at the very top of the page, showing that Apple is not only behind this account, but hopes people use it.

While it’s hardly a big deal for a company to join Twitter these days — Google did to much hoopla a few weeks ago — it is a big deal that anyone from Apple would be allowed to use the service under the company name. It would seem a safe bet that Steve Jobs and company don’t want any employees using the service, lest they accidentally reveal any plans the secretive company may have.

The iTunesTrailers account isn’t just an automated stream of links to new trailers, either. Whoever’s running it is answering user questions and even tweeting out seemingly random information like any good Twitter user might do. For example, a tweet this morning from the account reads: “@stango Yoga can be quite a workout. Good luck if you do!”

The company’s first tweet, one week ago, was a slick reference to the film Blade Runner, as ZDNet notes. “This announcement is brought to you by the Shimato-Dominguez Corporation – helping America into the New World,” it read.

It’s good to see Apple taking even a small step to engage its users on a popular social web platform. Apple has also been using Facebook for a while, but that is strictly for promotions. I don’t expect we’ll stumble upon a Steve Jobs Twitter account anytime soon, though, like we did for Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg a few weeks ago.

You can find me on Twitter here along with fellow VentureBeatniks Eric Eldon, Dean Takahashi, Anthony Ha, Camille Ricketts, Dan Kaplan and Matt Marshall. We have a VentureBeat account (for our posts) as well.