Yes Ping was a flop, but it was a highly specialized social network focused only on music. (And even though, some of its features were incorporated into Apple Music.) I would still like to see a general purpose, cross-platform social network from Apple. I would even consider paying for it if the user base reaches "critical mass."
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why? what benefit would Apple get from that?
why would any non-apple use want to give their data to apple?
What would you get on there that you don’t get on sites like this? It would still be Apple fans talking to each other with nobody else interested.
That’s what’s happens in startups. But I seem to remember apple seems to have progressive programs in place to make sure future iOS developers are available.
The REASON why it was highly specialized, though, is that the idea is that the folks that were public, the artists, would be what everyone centered around. It was never about an individual building their own brand and getting to know and influence millions of other strangers. Apple, in this current iteration, would never create a platform where people readily and repeatedly provide private information on themselves to the public.
And, looking at it from Apple’s side, with the amount of moderation that would be required for anything starting up today, it would be a massive money sync without even the barest possibility of making a profit. The closest Apple would ever get to a social network is Ping or something LIKE Ping, and no one is going to pay to be on that.
The REASON why it was highly specialized, though, is that the idea is that the folks that were public, the artists, would be what everyone centered around. It was never about an individual building their own brand and getting to know and influence millions of other strangers. Apple, in this current iteration, would never create a platform where people readily and repeatedly provide private information on themselves to the public.
And, looking at it from Apple’s side, with the amount of moderation that would be required for anything starting up today, it would be a massive money sync without even the barest possibility of making a profit. The closest Apple would ever get to a social network is Ping or something LIKE Ping, and no one is going to pay to be on that.
On the other hand, a lot of us don’t want a social network where our posts are open to the public. We want something where we can see what our friends are up to, and where we can share photos with just them, etc.
I’m convinced that if there were ENOUGH people, that a business case could be made. I mean, there are people paying $99 a year for email.
Even if there’s not a commercial solution, there are utilities that can be deployed to Amazon servers that could replicate the idea of a sharing space. But, the group that sets it up would have to also take on the job of ensuring the latest security patches are applied regularly and ensure that one person’s infected laptop doesn’t corrupt the whole thing.It’s just not a market that I feel Apple would enter.
I’m convinced that if there were ENOUGH people, that a business case could be made. I mean, there are people paying $99 a year for email.
It’s just not a market that I feel Apple would enter.
I don’t disagree that Apple would avoid it. But I do think there’s a fairly big market for folks willing to pay $5-10 a month to share baby photos, birthday greetings, etc. without being spied on, without seeing ads, etc. I think iMessage could pretty easily be converted into such a network. Just add a “wall” feature - when you message someone you can, if you want, make your message visible to the recipient’s other friends, and all that shows up on your “wall” in the message app. You can post to your own wall, as well, which any of your friends can see. Maybe multiple walls, each visible to a different group of contacts you define. Pretty much that’s all it would take.
I think a lot of people, like myself, already had the previous version (settings) disabled and the update simply kept their settings.I don't think it is, but it should be
Its called ‘mail’ and ‘phone calling‘ and ‘iMessage’ and ‘social contact’ and ‘the way things have always been’ etc. NOT being sarcastic!!!!
I think it'll be the other way around. Google won't let Apple champion the privacy thing alone. Soon enough they'll copy the latest policies like they've done a lot in the past.
you think apple don’t collect data from their users and don’t use it for their own gain?
not quite. None of those allow mass sharing with collections of friends (other than in contact). And in-contact is problematic for two reasons - pandemic, and geography. Many people live hundreds or thousands of miles away from family and friends. My wife and I live in northern california and our only family lives in chicago, Colorado, and north and South Carolina. Our friends live in NY, New England, pennsylvania and Southern California. People move for jobs and for retirement. We’d still like to be involved in each other’s lives, month-to-month see our kids grow up, etc. Sharing a fun drink recipe, a snapshot of something funny our kid did today, excited comments about the Mets’ last win, etc. with everyone is a nice way to feel involved without having to call 30 people every week.
Of course they can. They attempt to retrieve the identifier, they get denied, they pop a dialog asking you to enable it. Whatever gave you the idea an app couldn't pop whatever dialog they wanted?
Well, it’s always been true (See: FaceBook). It’s just that folks were less aware that it was true. There hasn’t been a social network created yet that didn’t have a commercial purpose.
For all those applauding the "development", I do wonder how this will turn out.
The implications are that ad based business has to either die or leave (or find another loop hole). If it dies that bad for the economy as a whole, if they leave that would mean many "free (payed via ads)" apps like facebook, instagram, tiktok, youtube, ... and many more will have to abandon the platform.
Yes Apple could take over and show ads anyway but without user profiles ad revenue is no where near that profitable. Use profiles allow small businesses to show targeted ads which makes it worthwhile. Randomly spamming ads to anybody on the web is only worthwhile for huge budget brands, which is why that ad showing is cheap and not worth much.
In the past modus operandi was to basically favour business and let people who are very serious have their way by allowing them to disable stuff like that. So those people are lost to business but they weren't enough to really be worth going to war over.
Now if these numbers remain true only a fraction of people can still be targeted. That could (if nothing changes) have very big implications. Some people may say, "yeah great". And for many of those that would have actively disabled it that is probably true. But I don't think the majority of people aren't really aware of what this means in the long run.
Most of the ad block people are in it for the convenience of having their cake and eat it too (in the sprit of great the other people still pay for my free stuff with their data after all).
Many of consumption focused (shoppers, news/media bingers) non tech crowd I think they don't really know that they will have either much less to choose from or more paywalls or both.
The implications are that ad based business has to either die or leave (or find another loop hole). If it dies that bad for the economy as a whole, if they leave that would mean many "free (payed via ads)" apps like facebook, instagram, tiktok, youtube, ... and many more will have to abandon the platform.
Yes Apple could take over and show ads anyway but without user profiles ad revenue is no where near that profitable. Use profiles allow small businesses to show targeted ads which makes it worthwhile. Randomly spamming ads to anybody on the web is only worthwhile for huge budget brands, which is why that ad showing is cheap and not worth much.
In the past modus operandi was to basically favour business and let people who are very serious have their way by allowing them to disable stuff like that. So those people are lost to business but they weren't enough to really be worth going to war over.
Now if these numbers remain true only a fraction of people can still be targeted. That could (if nothing changes) have very big implications. Some people may say, "yeah great". And for many of those that would have actively disabled it that is probably true. But I don't think the majority of people aren't really aware of what this means in the long run.
Most of the ad block people are in it for the convenience of having their cake and eat it too (in the sprit of great the other people still pay for my free stuff with their data after all).
Many of consumption focused (shoppers, news/media bingers) non tech crowd I think they don't really know that they will have either much less to choose from or more paywalls or both.
Die, leave or CHANGE. I mean, network television don’t have detailed information about each one of the televisions in my house, and no detailed information about the owners of millions of televisions all over the country. It’s only a matter of time before they stop running ads on television. OH, and the radio, too, guess that ad industry will dry up, too, without access to detailed information on the users. The ONLY thing you need to make your advertising valuable is to know “This ad is being shown or an iOS device or on a Mac.” You’re AUTOMATICALLY targeting folks that have shown they have money to spend and don’t mind spending it on things they think are worthwhile… and “what device I’m using” is a level of information most folks would be fine with.
This isn’t related to advertising. There are many ways to target users that doesn’t require a company to track users across the internet. That advertising will absolutely continue, no loophole is required. This is primarily about the fact that some companies have made a profitable side business about selling the details on your internet-wide surfing to third parties. As each day passes, a large portion of the internet community is excluded from this total meaning that data set is getting less and less accurate and less and less valuable.
The day Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube abandon iOS… is the day after Apple announces the end of the platform
They don’t care. As long as there’s more than they can consume, they’re good. And there will always be more than they can consume because for each company that bows out, there will be two or three going for that group of folks. They’ll figure it out, maybe pay the CEO a little less than the 3 million dollars they’re paying them and pour that back into the company?
True. But there is no inherent reason dictating that social networks are based on data abuse. Everyone just assumes it has to be like that because Facebook does it.
For now, I guess the problem is that noone found a way to cover expenses apart from advertising (assuming the service is free as in free of charge for users).
Not that this means advertising requires data abuse - but you get the picture
You’re right, advertising doesn’t require data abuse, TV and Radio get by just fine. All the companies are used to data abuse being a part of “online advertising” and it’s going to take actions like those Apple has taken to force them to pull back from that stance.
It's not just Facebook, it's numerous platforms.
The economic incentives hugely favor it . . . to become a viable social network requires growing the network to a large scale. The way to do that isn't to ask people to pay - who would pay for access to a network of 1? But free allows people to try something out with no meaningful commitment other than giving up some information about themselves.
Now, why hasn't any network tried to convert its model, or at least done so successfully, to paid? Probably because they're all afraid of turning into MySpace, where everybody leaves for the next "free" network.
That said, perhaps the environment now it's possible . . . start free, but then convert to ad-free (and tracking free) with a subscription model. Really that does seem to work for some apps with the freemium/ad-free model. Try it out and then upgrade to a better (ad-free) experience. Given people seem somewhat more aware of how companies use their data, it's not inconceivable to see it working.
The startup money won’t help if they don’t have a revenue stream to pay the bills. Unless your app is worth paying for sadly I think you won’t last long on iOS. That means a lot of small indie developers will go down.