This is private sharing, not a social network.<p>Private sharing is about sending content to people A, B, and C (“push”). Think iMessage, WhatsApp, Snapchat.<p>Social networks are about people discovering your content (“pull”). Think Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Threads.<p>The two differ in important ways: dynamics of how they work, how they grow, what consumers care about in a product, what success looks like, tech stack, etc.<p>The author is conflating the two.
>I don’t know if Apple has the DNA for web-scale consumer social software compared to Meta.<p>Yeah, they don’t. I’ve been using their cloud stuff since iTools and they’ve always been pure crap. Apple just doesn’t “get” the whole website thing for whatever reason lol
>You can assign identified people to one of your contacts and use that for faceted search.<p>Now that is a use of the term faceted not yet seen. Wow.
iMessage is a huge part of Apple growth in the USA, as the needle has just flipped to over 50% of US users on iOS I think it will rapidly accelerate.<p>Not being on iMessage for many Americans is MUCH stranger than not using Facebook.