To many users, Twitter for iPhone (the artist formerly known as Tweetie) is perhaps the perfect Twitter client (though I’d argue that the new Twitter for iPad is right there with it). But the one thing it has been lacking and that users knock it for is the lack of Push Notifications. Well, good news. They’re coming. Soon.

Twitter is currently internally testing the feature, we’ve confirmed. Interestingly enough, we learned of its existence when the latest version of the app went out yesterday (the universal binary that included Twitter for iPad). It appears that users who have iOS 4.1 installed (which just hit Gold Master for developers, but won’t be official out until next week) get the option to enable Push Notifications for Twitter. They don’t appear to be working yet, but the feature is definitely there.

Here’s Twitter’s statement on the matter:

We’ve been testing push notifications internally. When we launched Twitter for iPad, there was a configuration error that caused us to offer push messages to a small set of users. We’ve stopped sending push messages, but users may see an option to turn on push until we release an updated version of the app. So, push isn’t ready yet but we look forward to rolling this out soon.

I’ve asked Twitter to clarify what exactly is getting pushed. I assume DMs and @replies are two options, but it will be interesting if search items or specific lists are options as well. Twitter hasn’t gotten back to me on that just yet.

Currently, a few third-party apps enable Push Notifications for Twitter, notably, Boxcar and Notifo (via Push.ly).

[thanks Nick]