Apple Friends: An Inevitable Social Media Platform?

Chris Do of the futur loves putting lengthy videos on YouTube. Often close to an hour in length, his content packs so many valuable insights that I feel the need to take notes. This video, clocking in at 56 minutes, contained lots of great advice about how to grow an audience on the various social media platforms, and also some insight into which platforms to focus on. It also raised a fascinating question:

Will Apple launch a social media app?

In my mind, the question can be reframed: When will Apple finish launching their social media app?

There is only one missing piece left for Apple to drop into their tight-knit ecosystem in order to have a fully-fledged social media platform. But first, which parts do they have in place already?

Chat

iMessage (potentially rebranded to Apple Messages in accordance with other products) is becoming more and more social. As The Verge notes in (this article), Apple continuously adds features found on other social media platforms to their messaging app, making it feel more fun and social.

Photos

The popular social media networks are focused on visual content. Even Twitter and Linkedin, which lean more towards written content, are rife with photos and videos. Other platforms (Snapchat, Instagram, Tik-Tok) are entirely based around sharing visual content, be it photos or videos.

Contacts

It’s not social media without people you know. This might be the trickiest logistical problem to solve; how will Apple know which of your contacts are friends and which ones are coworkers or clients? The answer could be AI, but it could also be based on user action, similar to Facebook or other platforms where friends are added.

The Missing Link

What does Apple need to tie all these things together and finalize the creation of their social media platform? A feed — probably photos, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t be photos + videos + text + links etc.

There it is: if Apple launches a feed, pulling from your Photos and tagging your contacts via its faces AI, they will be solidly in the social media sphere. It would take only moments in one of their legendary keynotes to take them from software & hardware powerhouse to social media juggernaut.