Apple senior vice president of marketing turned Apple fellow Phil Schiller voted with his feet over the weekend and deleted his Twitter account. Apple, on the other hand, has not — despite how it may appear.
Schiller’s account went offline over the weekend, although it could technically return within 30 days without losing tweets and followers. The exit is likely (i.e., obviously) a protest of Elon Musk’s Twitter management, which includes reinstating former President Donald Trump.
Schiller has previously signaled disapproval of a social network over less if you consider Instagram releasing an Android app smaller potatoes that Musk’s Twitter takeover. The former Apple exec maintained the Twitter account for 14 years before taking it down. A tweet from earlier this year marked the anniversary of the original iPhone reveal.
1-9-07. 15 years ago Steve introduced
#iPhone to the world. A dream became a reality. Congratulations to everyone inside & outside#Apple who ever worked on it, built it, tested it, supported it, made apps for it, and most of all have used it. We changed the world.
Schiller also tweeted about fast cars, James Bond movies, and this story I wrote in 2017. The tweet is gone now, but you can still find the replies here. Phil Schiller’s presence on Twitter will be missed, but I understand.
Meanwhile, you could easily be mistaken by looking at Apple’s Twitter profile and thinking the company deleted all of its tweets. That could easily be interpreted as Apple protesting the way things are going so far at Twitter 2.0.
Apple first populated its Twitter account with profile and header images in 2016 once that became a requirement for running sponsored tweets. Six years later, Apple still uses its @Apple official account for product ads you see on Twitter.
Instead, CEO Tim Cook and marketing SVP Greg Joswiak have Twitter accounts that are used for company messaging. Apple not using @Apple remains an odd choice, however, especially considering it uses lots of other Twitter accounts including @AppleSupport, @AppleMusic, and @AppleTV.
Apple also has something to gain financially if subscription revenue becomes significant for Twitter.
Apple not tweeting from its official company account isn’t just weird though. It’s also why loads of folks believed Apple deleted its tweets today after Schiller’s weekend departure from the service. This is made more confusing by the fact that you’ve probably seen tweets by @Apple in your timeline over the years.
That’s simply because ads on Twitter appear as native tweets in the timeline. Apropos of nothing, the new Twitter owner reportedly wants Twitter to make ads on its platform look like native tweets.
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