MG Siegler:

You wake up. You grab your phone. What’s the first app you open?

This sounds like a silly question — or worse, an insulting one. But I find it’s a rather enlightening question. Depending on when the question is asked, the answer can either be telling about the current state of apps or the current state of you.

Like MG, the first app I open every morning is Twitter – well, Tweetbot anyway. It used to be email; then Tweetie; at one point, it was Reeder; for the past year, the first app I’ve always opened in the morning has been Tweetbot. Twitter used to be described as the “water cooler”, and maybe to an extent it still is – but the scope is much larger these days. I can open Twitter and instantly see my mentions about MacStories or The Prompt, direct messages from friends, breaking news, interesting articles, the latest meme – anything. In fact, when in the morning I tell my girlfriend I’m “catching up on the news”, it means I’m scrolling through Tweetbot/Twitter.

In the past few months, I’ve been enjoying the Discover section of the official Twitter app as a “catch up system” too. However, my favorite aspect of the morning Twitter routine remains Tweetbot’s support for background fetching of tweets on iOS 7 – it’s why Tweetbot for iPhone is the first app I use.