One of the things that had bugged me for ages about Windows Phone's social integration was that in the 'Me' tile, the integration point for all your interactions with the world, the Twitter 'mentions' were simply a record that you had indeed been 'mentioned', along with the person's name and time. You then had to tap through (and step back from) every single 'mention' if you wanted to know what had been said. Microsoft has flipped a switch at their end and WP8 (Portico update and above) users should now be seeing most (if not all) of the text of each 'mention'.

Here's a typical shot of how things used to be (left), along with a shot (right) of how things look after Microsoft's server-side tweak - effectively pushing more information out with each notification to users with 'Portico' firmware (or above). In practice, this is the vast majority of Windows Phone 8 users now, all of whom can go check their Me tile's notifications area to see for themselves.

This is a major time-saving improvement in Windows Phone 8 as a platform, in my view. It may seem like a trivial change to some, but it means that the core WP8 social system is now much more suitable for use day to day and saves most people from having to also have a completely separate Twitter client installed, which (with the best will in the world) won't be quite so well integrated.

Those WP8 users with firmware pre-Portico just have to be patient - there's a new wave of firmware updates rolling out today - I suggest checking your phone for updates daily.

(Hat tip to Aliqudsi here for jogging my grey matter!)