Ahead of next week’s iPhone 7 launch, Apple has finally gotten around to activating an official @Apple Twitter account, which has already attracted 130K followers — despite not sending a single tweet yet.
Apple first registered the @Apple Twitter handle back in September 2011, around the time of the iPhone 4s launch, although the account was not live until now.
This isn’t the first Apple-related Twitter account. Tim Cook, Eddy Cue, Angela Ahrendts and a number of other Apple senior execs already have accounts, while last year the company launched an @AppleSupport account to help answer user queries.
Apple has been tentatively embracing social media in the past few years, quite possibly in an attempt to appeal to younger customers. In 2014, the company opened its first ever Tumblr page, initially dedicated to the top iTunes picks for music, movies, TV shows and books for that year. Tim Cook has also opened a Baidu account as part of Apple’s push into China.
Right now, there’s not too much to say about a Twitter account that has yet to post. The background picture, however, recycles the same image from the enigmatic press invitation for the upcoming iPhone 7 launch — suggesting that Apple could live tweet details from the event, or feature some other special Twitter-related iPhone 7 promotion.
All we can say is that it’s #abouttime.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
