Microsoft's new ‘Snipp3t’ iPhone app tracks celebrities
Microsoft is no stranger to iPhone apps, but its latest Snipp3t app is a surprise addition. Released over the weekend, Snipp3t lets you subscribe to follow and track your favorite celebrities. Each celebrity has a profile page created …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Snipp3t launch lands mid-stream in a quiet cross-platform push: two days earlier Microsoft put its OneDrive cloud-storage app on the Amazon Appstore for Android devices, and the same week the Windows Phone Store crossed 300,000 apps with Microsoft expecting universal Windows apps to accelerate the count. A consumer celebrity-tracking app for Apple's platform, picked up by eight outlets from TUAW to iMore, reads as another step in that direction.
It also cuts against the company's long-held reputation for poor software development and delivery — a reputation the coverage notes Microsoft has been working to shed through modernized practices — since Snipp3t is a polished consumer play built for a rival ecosystem rather than for Windows.
First-order effects
- Microsoft is now competing directly for iOS users' daily attention with a consumer social-curation app, extending its iPhone presence beyond the utility and productivity tools it was already known for.
Second-order effects
- Shipping flagship consumer work on iOS while the Windows Phone Store sits at 300,000 apps sharpens the resourcing tension inside Microsoft: talent and product investment flow to the rival ecosystem that offers the larger audience.
Third-order effects
- Taken together with OneDrive's arrival on the Amazon Appstore days earlier, the pattern points toward Microsoft operating as a platform-neutral publisher whose services live wherever users are, further eroding the Windows-first app strategy that defined its older developer reputation.
The trend: Microsoft is repositioning from a Windows-first app maker into a cross-platform software publisher, treating iOS and Android storefronts as first-class distribution channels.