Imagine if Twitter became a Google App

I'm slowly but surely becoming a social media geek, and keep looking for ways to make use of slick Web 2.0 tools like Twitter and Ning in the classroom. Now, the announcement that Google has made themselves a Twitter account has fueled some serious speculation that Google just might be looking to acquire the microblogging platform.

As a PC World article puts it,

There's no doubt that both the business and consumer world see an interest in what Twitter has to offer. That said, is Google going to pull a YouTube and swoop in to make a bid for the site's growing search capabilities? Would a partnership with Google finally give Twitter access to a successful advertising platform and, more importantly, a continued revenue stream that the company has sought since its inception?

Who knows how such an acquisition might actually come together? However, if I ran the world, Twitter would be integrated into Google Apps. I've talked a fair amount about the use of Twitter in the classroom; now imagine if it was just one more application in a suite using a common login for students and teachers. Following a Twitter stream in a class would be as easy as opening your Gmail and accessible through the same portal. For Edu Apps (or any Apps for your Domain account), it would be incredibly easy to limit traffic to only Tweets from your domain, helping reduce the distractions of outside conversations.

Add Google's search capabilities and potential integration with Google Talk, Gmail, or even Docs and you have yet another killer cloud application.

Go for it, Google. Buy Twitter...just make sure you let it stay Twitter in the same way you let YouTube stay YouTube and figure out how to integrate microblogging into Apps while you're at it.