Getting news via a social media app doesn’t seem that popular. Apple News, however, may corner the news app market. Facebook has decided to ditch their news app, Notify, after poor download numbers. Facebook announced that they will be removing their notification-based service from the App Store. The small number of Notify users will need to find a new source of news. This could boost Apple News users, leaving Google to fight them for app downloads.
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No More Facebook Notify
Facebook said that they will be moving parts of Notify to their more popular app products, like Facebook Messenger. It seems that news fans prefer social media to stick to social media and leave news to other tech giants. Notify was launched in November of last year, but has seen very few users. The Facebook app only received 5,000 downloads in six months. This is a big fail when comparing it to Facebook Messenger, and app that has 900 million users per month. They will be moving Notify features to Messenger in an attempt to boost that apps success.
Apple News Set To Destroy the Competition
This was not the first standalone Facebook app that has been ditched. Creative Labs was also launched and later tossed. This puts Apple News in a great position to corner the news app market. Roughly 40 million people were estimated to have used the news app in January. Keeping users was a challenge, however, as the app was said to be off to a rocky start. Apple revamped their strategy in March by creating Apple News Format. This gave content creators, big media houses, photographers, and bloggers the chance to publish their content to iOS app users.
Will Google Keep Fighting?
Apple has opened up the news market in a big way. And Google may need to fight back to keep users, or risk being destroyed like Facebook’s Notify. Apple has partnered with more than 20 big name publishers in order to boost users. Google, on the other hand, has the largest search engine ever. This helps them reach users. Google News and Weather is great for Android users. And it offers more than 65,000 different news sources in 60 different languages. Both Apple and Google will have a long battle ahead.
