Welcome @Apple to Twitter. Kinda!
- sep
- 03
To tweet or not to tweet, that's the @Apple's question.
Rene Ritchie has been covering Apple and the personal technology industry for almost a decade. Editor-in-chief of iMore, executive editor for Mobile Nations, video and podcast host, you can follow him on Snapchat or Twitter @reneritchie.
The @Apple account has existed for years, a desolate, fallow timeline with a growing follower count yet an egg-default profile picture, nary a tweet to its name. That changed this week. Now, it you visit the page, you'll see an iconic if understated black and white version of the Apple logo, with a bright blue Verified by Twitter badge slapped on the side, and the black and brightly bokeh iPhone 7 event invitation set as background.
You still won't see any tweets, though — unless you know where to look.
Michael Ducker, formerly of Twitter (and Mobile Nations):
I found @Apple's first tweet! It was nullcasted... And they have a hashflag! #AppleEvent pic.twitter.com/9nqU7l4O05
— Michael Ducker (@miradu) September 2, 2016
Nullcasting is the old term for Tweets that are promoted through Twitter's advertising platform but aren't shown on the tweeter's timeline. The new term is promoted only. (Andy Baio shared some fun tricks with promoted tweets early last year.)
Apple's promoted only tweet, unsurprisingly, is for the upcoming iPhone 7 event on September 7. Again, you won't see it in @Apple's timeline, but you can get to it directly.
September 7 at 10 a.m. PT
— Apple (@Apple) September 2, 2016
Watch the event on https://t.co/yLa2e4Xr2R.
RT for a reminder on event day. #AppleEvent pic.twitter.com/e9MHNkLeoi
If you do retweet it, you get a reply, also nullcasted through the ads platform:
@reneritchie thank you.
— Apple (@Apple) September 2, 2016
We'll send you a reminder shortly before the event.
See you on the 7th. pic.twitter.com/0H1jR3MteP
As Ducker mentioned in the tweet embedded above, in addition to the Schrödinger's tweets, Apple is promoting both a hashtag, #AppleEvent and a hashflag. A hashflah, introduced in 2010 and resurrected for the World Cup, automatically appends an emoji-like flag to the end of a hashtag. In this case, an Apple logo flag at the end of #AppleEvent.
Hey, if you had hundreds of billions in the bank, you'd have outrageous nullcast and hashflag fun on social as well! (You know you would!)
It'll be interesting to see how Apple uses @Apple going forward. Will the company live-tweet the iPhone 7 event like some of us do concerts, soccer games, or episodes of the Bachelor? Will it be used to share product announcements, images, and video? Will it reflect Apple's new Newsroom? Will it retweet @tim_cook and @pschiller? Will it's emoji game be as tight as @AppStore?
We'll find out soon enough.