First, some background. This story has just one source. That source is a developer of a popular Twitter app for the iPhone. Said source is also a fool or just too rich for his own good.

According to John Gruber at Daring Fireball, Microsoft has made contact with at least one iPhone developer with the hopes of getting some app love for the Zune. The developer, who contacted John with the story, was apparently offered “a bucket of money” to port his Twitter app to a product that was at the time undisclosed.

I know there are reasons you might turn that sort of thing down, like loyalty to a certain brand (which I don’t understand unless Microsoft has screwed you in some life altering way), but a bucket of money sounds pretty nice to me. Don’t want to do the work? Get one of your friends to do it for a finder’s fee. I dunno, seems like something I would have jumped on.

The real news in all of this is that Microsoft is trying, and pretty hard, to get some serious app support for the Zune HD. They need it too. Sure the thing looks cool, but it’s just a media player and a mobile web browser for now. Adding some delicious apps could help them take a significant slice of that delicious Apple pie.