Remember when Apple set up something of a social media network? Nope? No one else does, either. Just three years ago, Apple introduced Apple Music Connect, marketing it as “unique” and promising that it would be a prominent service which could connect artists with their audience.
They really went to town on exaggerating the ostensible originality, too. When they called it a brand new opportunity for up-and-coming artists to reach a wide audience, they had obviously forgotten about little old Facebook and that other one called Twitter.
Twitter comes out on top…
It seems pretty blatant that Apple had wanted their Connect feature to be their own version of Twitter, and fully expected that it would be. However, there was a slight problem with that: while Twitter has less than half the users of Apple (330m vs 1.3bn), Twitter has been fostering connections between musicians and their audiences since the microblogging site’s debut over a decade ago.
Quite why Apple expected all 107 million of Katy Perry’s Twitter followers to jump ship and join their own social network is something of a mystery. We’re sure that, albeit with the power of hindsight, you all agree that this was never going to work.
They’d rather tweet!
Although we’re still waiting on an official announcement from Apple (something we may never get), they have mentioned that Connect posts from artists are no longer supported, giving the impression of a venture that Apple wants to kill off quietly and forget all about.
It’s time Apple learned that, when it comes to social media, there already giants in this field, and shaking their popularity would be no easy task. Like the ghosts of social media past (Bebo, Myspace and, more recently, Google+), Apple Connect is set to fade out quickly and quietly.
Of course, no official death date for the Twitter you’ve never heard of has been announced, but it is expected that Apple Music Connect will be officially disconnected by early 2019.