All jokes aside, it’s hard to miss a big new product from Apple, even if you’re not in the slightest bit interested with technology. That’s certainly the case on Twitter, where Apple, iPhone and WWDC (The conference it was unveiled at) were all trending topics before Apple executive Phil Schiller even took to the stage.

What you may or may not have seen was another trending topic on Twitter today that emerged once Apple fans had swept the broken shards of jaw off the floor and duck taped them back together to read through the fine print: #o2fail.

O2 is the network with exclusive rights in the UK to the iPhone 3G S, as the new model is called, and in the hours after the iPhone unveiling, it put up the pricing plans for the different tariffs, along with a little smallprint. Unlike last year, when original iPhone owners were able to get out of their contract and pay a set amount to jump to the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3G owners will have to pay extra to get out of their current contracts. Almost everyone I follow seemed to have a gripe about O2 today, and some Twitterers even started petitions for “reasonable” iPhone pricing.

Now, some of O2′s pricing is fair enough (The iPhone 3G is subsidised by O2 on monthly contracts, so it needs you to cough up for the entire contract to stay in the black), and some of it is Scrooge-like (Despite a price cut in the US, the iPhone 3G is still the same price in the UK it was a year ago). But it’s fascinating to now see Twitter as the – realtime – forum to air all these woes. Even the petitions doing the rounds are built with the Twitter API.

O2 has actually been answering questions on Twitter via @o2 for some time now, and while it didn’t address general 140 character grumbles, it was responding to any individual tweet about the new iPhone pricing throughout last night and today. And despite the hostile messaging, it was staying positive and helpful throughout (“We’ll be in touch when you are eligible to upgrade”).

The upshot? You’ve got to give credit to O2′s marketing department, if not the beancounters elsewhere in the company. It’s recognised Twitter is an important, and crucially public, communication platform. It expected questions to come flooding in on Twitter, and it was on hand to answer them when they did. If only all companies tried to be this accessible.

I’m talking about the Palm Pre and potential new iPhone being released and most likely unveiled on 6 June and 8 June respectively in Yankville. What’s got the entire internet abuzz isn’t that the Palm Pre ups the megapixels or has built in DJ mixing deck (As Nathan Barley-esque as that is, Samsung is doing that). It’s the new operating system, webOS, which promises all the pizazz of the iPhone with brilliant integration of all your different contacts – and that’ll eventually mean everything from Skype to Facebook and Twitter.

Now, any big social network and platform will have mobile clients already, but nothing that weaves them altogether like new desktop clients are starting to – Seesmic Desktop for instance. You’d think someone would have it nailed for the iPhone already, but because it doesn’t allow programs to run in the background and hog all the battery juice, we’re still stuck in the stage of reactive mobile social media. In other words, you have to go out of your way to look at a specific social network on your phone.

What webOS will do, and ought to shake up other mobile platforms to offer, is tell you when people are talking to you, or talking about things you need to know about. It’ll do it unobtrusively too, scrolling across the bottom of the screen rather than bleeping off and getting all up in your grill every time someone throws you a virtual Frisbee on Facebook. Yes, it’s been done with the INQ1 phone on the Three network, but that’s a closed system, and not available in North America either, cutting out a large chunk of audience.

As for the iPhone? It’s unlikely to run background apps just yet, although there are rumours to that extent. But the new iPhone software will be bringing push notification, realtime alerts, to its apps very soon, which goes a long way towards achieving that same target.

What does this mean for social media? If what you need to know can come to you, rather than the other way around, wherever you are, you’re looking at better delivery of the keywords, topics and news that matter, reaching a wider audience than ever before, and you can bet that we at Republic will be riding that wave right from the start. I’m off to book a plane ticket…