Next week Apple shows off iOS 5 at its Worldwide Developers Conference, and while much remains unknown about what will be included, a new report suggests Twitter is on the VIP list.

In a post this afternoon, TechCrunch says Apple is baking Twitter into the operating system to help users post photos they've taken on their iOS devices directly to the service. The feature is said to be integrated into the camera and photo roll to let users share pictures to Twitter just like they would a video to YouTube, Vimeo, or one of the other video-hosting sites Apple includes.

That idea in itself is not so outlandish with the expected launch of an official photo-hosting service from Twitter, which AllThingsD says will be announced tomorrow night at the outlet's D9 conference. As the Twitter photo-sharing landscape currently stands, users have to venture to outside sites for photo hosting, scattering the options across a number of providers. With Apple's current sharing tools for photos and videos, such an expansive list could prove challenging to fit and maintain.

What remains unclear is whether that Twitter integration would extend elsewhere, as Daring Fireball suggests. The most obvious place would be the Safari browser, as well as an API so third-party developers could bake easy Twitter integration into their own apps.

Apple has long been rumored to be exploring the addition of social features to its mobile devices. Signs that the company was close to that goal appeared in an early prototype device that surfaced late last month sporting what appeared to be an unreleased version of the iOS 4 software. It included an option to integrate the phone with a Facebook account, presumably to connect contact information.

Apple takes the wraps off iOS 5 on Monday with a keynote from CEO Steve Jobs at the Worldwide Developers Conference. The company has also promised to debut its iCloud "cloud services offering" as well as OS X 10.7 Lion, at the event.