As far as I can tell, it's not an empty platitude, Twitter puts their money where their mouth is. I admire them for it.
Disclosure: I work there. I see those words on laptop cases and screen savers every day at the Twitplex.
For decades communication researchers had trouble finding big media effects. That said, the same seems to be true for social networks.
One way to look at it is to say that the Internet didn't really turn out the way we all wanted it to. Another way to look at it is that we're not there yet but we're making progress.
Personally I say it's the latter, if for no other reason than on principle.
That said, remember what we all used to think the Internet would be like. Damn.
Look at the sustained popularity of micro communities and the rise of new ones e.g. Pinterest, Instagram. Not to mention all the communities most people aren't aware of for older people, mothers, children etc. And this is all without having the entire world involved.
Social is going nowhere so long as people want to share ideas, knowledge and content with each other.
I doubt it. Social is pretty overrated. While sharing is still important to many people, it seems that great software and the ability to access quality content is far more important than what my casual aquaintences are up to. Anecdotally, my 'friends' seem to be less social online and less willing to share every little life detail despite the increases ease of doing so.
The analysts are wrong. It's like saying the Mac needs to be more social to be successful in the future. Besides, how much more social Cana smartphone get? It's a phone and a pocket computer already. Besides, Apple is primarily a hardware company and secondarily a content agency. Their revenues don't depend on advertising, which is really the only business model social currently has. The last thing Apple wants to do is be an advertising company.
Still, I am happy with Apple getting friendly with Twitter. I find Twitter to be much less obnoxious than Facebook. API and infrastructure debacles aside, Twitter seems a lot less arrogant and threatening than Zuck and Co. Twitter, for example doesn't suddenly make your direct messages public or change privacy settings in onerous and unexpected ways.