Apple attacks Facebook by becoming the antisocial network – TechCrunch



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Sharing with everyone has passed and more than a little scary these days. We want to send photos to friends without publishing them publicly. We want to evoke memories without being permanently defined by our deadlines. And we want the usefulness of applications without disclosing our contact information to developers.

The problem is that this philosophy is difficult to monetize for a social network that must maximize the content broadcast and its commitment to mark the ad postings. But it's easy to monetize if you sell the phone and then let people be as private as they want. That's why, at WWDC, Apple today introduced the changes that are transforming iOS into an asocial network – software that mimics Facebook's tools but without the pressure to over-share.

Most surprisingly, Apple Apps that offer third-party sign-in options, such as Facebook and Google, will need to incorporate its new Sign In With Apple feature that allows users to hide their email addresses from developers. It's a coup that makes Facebook look sinking with your contact information by comparison.

Privacy has been at the heart of Apple's concerns for years, from the secure enclave of the iPhone to FaceID, including message encryption and protection against tracking. But these guarantees have been focused on the need to let Apple's products "work". More and more, Apple is advancing privacy in the user experience to highlight how to get the most out of sharing less. This is a sensible strategy because the company has proven its inability to create social networks on a large scale from Ping, Apple Music Connect and iMessage.

"At Apple, we believe that privacy is a fundamental human right and we integrate it into all our activities," said Craig Federighi, Apple's Senior Vice President, . Mark Zuckerberg said "The future is private" at Facebook's F8 conference a month ago, but has proven that this was not the past or present of his company by not launching products protecting consumers. users. Now, as Google did at I / O a few weeks ago with many launches of privacy-related technologies, Apple is really tipping the current iOS beta 13.

Photo message recommendations – When you view the sharing sheet for a photo or video in iOS 13, Apple will recommend anyone to send it via iMessage or Mail based on people with whom you frequently share information and if friends appear in the contents. In a few taps, you can transmit your images privately to many of your closest friends and favorite group discussions, which will save you from having to post them more widely on Facebook or Instagram.

Asocial media tools – Instagram offers no way to upload a photo or video that you edit without first displaying it in the feed. This greedy growth gives way to Apple to further usurp the creative process. iOS 13 will allow you to edit videos for lighting, color, contrast, etc., as well as rotate clips that you have accidentally turned sideways – which Instagram and Facebook can not do. Not using the social network allows Apple to focus on tools that you are free to use as you wish.

Plus, with the new Photo Day feature, Apple automatically masks and highlights different photos of each day to create magazine-style presentations. This ignites nostalgia and creates a visual journal without all the content on social media being bothered to fuel the features of TimeHop and Facebook On This Day.

Memoji – To date, Apple's interest in animated avatar masks that resemble you is focused on FaceTime and video messages. But now we realize how these mini-virtual servers can improve privacy while establishing a deeper connection. iOS 13 will let you choose to share your name and Memoji (or a real photo) as a message thread thumbnail in iMessage so that new contacts like group chat friends can better identify you without showing your face to others. foreigners. And Memoji can now be used as a pre-generated sticker in the chat, making it a direct competitor of Bitmoji's Facebook and Snapchat avatars that has just been launched.

AirPods audio sharing – And if, instead of stammering what you're listening to on social media or typing a song link text to a friend, they could just instantly transfer the sound into their headphones so you swing in sync? This is how the upcoming AirPods audio sharing works to allow you to exchange music privately via Bluetooth without exposing your confusions of guilty pleasure.

Connect with Apple, not Facebook

Apple's brazen attack saw it call the name of the social network on the WWDC screen. Flashing logos for "Connecting with Facebook" and "Connecting with Google", which are popular for joining new applications without creating an account, Federighi said: "This can be convenient, but it can also be at the expense of your privacy . Your personal information is sometimes shared behind the scenes. These identifiers can be used to follow you. "

Instead, Apple launches "Sign In With Apple". It uses FaceID instead of asking you to create a new user name and password to sign up for a third-party application. Federighi explained to users that they could choose to hide their email addresses from application developers and that Apple provide them with a random proxy address to transmit it to their real address. This means that users can permanently block spam from the app, prevent the developer from sharing or selling their contact information, and avoid being targeted by marketing via their e-mail address. mail, as with custom Facebook ads.

This announcement sparked the strongest cheers from WWDC. And it seems that Apple is determined to derive as much competitive advantage as possible from its connection function. You can imagine that adoption by developers is beyond Apple's control and that it would have to prove that its lifetime value is greater than that of connection options that always provide a user's real email.

But if Apple failed to mention it on stage, the small print of its developer's brief indicate that "The connection with Apple will be available for beta testing this summer. This option will be required as an option for application users who support the third-party connection when it will be available commercially later this year. "

Of course, developers want to optimize listings by reducing friction during the integration. That's why connecting with features that do not allow you to remember that more passwords have become popular. The addition of the Apple connection option should theoretically help. But developers also rely on email addresses to wake up unused users with explosive messages, target them and the same users with re-engagement or to install ads, and exclude existing users to save money when from buying ads to recruiting new users.

If developers are concerned about logging in, the Apple proxy email address feature will harm them by cannibalizing registrations made with Facebook or Google that do not offer users a way to hide their Real contact information more than the convenience of a third connection option will help, they can do their best to bury or minimize the mandatory function. Apple may need to encourage the growth of developers by other means, for example by promoting them in the App Store if they prioritize its connection option to compensate for loss of life per user. loss of contact information. Unless moral imperatives, developers are no more likely to risk their business than they should in the name of confidentiality.

This is where Apple will learn that gaining height can have slowdowns. It can monetize the sale of computer hardware, but its developer partners are still relying on our attention.

Privacy is often an abstract concept for the mainstream consumer, who does not dictate his decisions, judging by the continued growth in the number of Facebook users. That's why promotional campaigns focused on the philosophy of confidentiality may seem to have little impact. But by building products and platforms that are objectively more useful and respectful of privacy than those of its competitors, Apple can allow natural market forces to steer users in the right direction – which happens to be the culmination of its brilliant retail stores.

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