Windows Phone’s People Hub is Perfect for Stories and Fleets
Reimagining an underutilized decade-old app which is just as relevant today
It’s no secret that Windows Phone no longer competes with the likes of the iPhone 12 or the OnePlus 8T. A mix of hubris and a lack of app support killed Microsoft’s ambitious appeal to the smartphone industry. But Windows Phone had its share of novelties, bonuses that were refreshing in a sea of grey phones. From splashy Live Tiles to a unified Dark Mode across applications, its effect can still be seen in phones today. The People Hub was a godsend for those who wanted a content aggregator designed for social media platforms. Not everyone was sold on the idea at first.
Matías Duarte, Google’s Vice President of Design, compared Windows Phone’s design aesthetic to “airport lavatory signage.” Apple’s skeuomorphism game was going strong, despite trading function for form. A couple of years ago, if you told me Android 4.0 and iOS 7 would adopt flat UI elements, I’d have found the claim preposterous. And yet, here we are.
Windows Phone was a remarkable failure but some of its bones are still ripe for the picking.
Ideas that were once ahead of their time are still eerily relevant in 2020. With LinkedIn and even Spotify adopting Snapchat’s Stories, the circles follow us everywhere. Call them doomscrolling pills masquerading as updates from friends but there’s no escaping them on social media platforms. For those with the mental willpower to scroll past cat pictures, following the right sources even lets them serve as a legitimate source of information. Either way, there’s an absurd abundance of platforms vying for our dying attention spans. All of them cater to different forms of content, be it Twitter’s short-form tweets, LinkedIn’s “I’m doing something useful” aesthetic, or TikTok’s short videos on just about anything. But what if one app could truly rule them all?
Rediscovering the People Hub
An app that combines several social media platform feeds into one sounds like nightmare fuel but hear me out. Windows Phone’s People Hub did a whole lot more. It had profiles that could store all of a person’s social media accounts. And yes, this was in addition to their contact information. Clicking on their name would display a neat feed of everything they’ve been up to, across platforms. The Recent tab would give you a bird’s eye view of people you tend to interact with, irrespective of the platform. And while this might seem repetitive for feeds that belong to influencers or those who share the same thing across multiple accounts, I’m pretty sure an algorithm can cut down on redundant posts.
Speaking of redundant posts, the like/react button would now serve an entirely different context. If one hits like on a post available on two apps, which platform does the action go to? Sure, one could set it to “like all” by default, but I’d appreciate more granular options. Stories could be dealt with in this manner as well, enabling all sorts of reactions to the 24-hour updates posted by friends and celebrities alike. By the same token, a unified messaging platform doesn’t hurt either. Groups and businesses would now have a common platform to build upon.
The move would drastically cut down the amount of time spent on several platforms while effectively serving you the same sort of content. Think of how a social media influencer or growth hacker could utilize this to post to several places at once. Keeping tabs on your audience or responding to tags would greatly be simplified.
As a user, you don’t have to scroll through the same mini-train of images across four apps anymore.
True, the advertising industry might not be too happy about an app that declutters social media. Reducing the time spent online can directly harm how ads work. And targeted ads working across platforms don’t sound any better for the end user. In fact, with payment options showing up on WhatsApp, People Hub could even work in the favour of businesses. Email syncing and integration with services like Discord, Slack, and Microsoft Teams could make this hub serviceable for business operations as well. A fair balance between work and play is something that can certainly be worked on.
Would People Hub work today?
While it might sound like I’m preaching for a single app that does it all, I don’t think any service can truly replace every social media experience out there. After all, they’ve been designed with distinct use-cases and a specific audience in mind. All I’m saying is that an app like Microsoft’s People Hub can coexist with regular social media platforms as a content aggregator. The approach isn’t the same as an RSS reader like Feedly grabbing information from the web or Google’s excellent news tab but it could serve a similar purpose. Following the right topics and sites could let you keep your finger on the pulse of a specific trend or an entire industry. The implications this has for the productive usage of social media platforms are tremendous.
If you’re looking to cut down on the time spent on memes or cat videos, an aggregator like the People Hub would help you keep in touch with what you deem important instead of selling your soul away to platforms that know everything about you. Remember that you’re still giving your information away, but you could now be in a position to govern where your time is spent. Grouping people and their social personas into different categories lets you organize your social life in a way that hasn’t been possible before. Microsoft is no saint either but it doesn’t have its skin in the game like every other social media platform. And while it does own LinkedIn, the platform isn’t exactly known for advertising or diverting you into a shopping spree. Contrast that with Instagram’s new Reels and Shopping tabs and you can see where this is going.
Android’s People app and Blackberry’s Contacts app (remember when BBM was a thing?) tried replicating what Microsoft set out to do, with varying levels of success. Plagued with synchronization issues and blown-up images that didn’t sit well on contact icons, Google quickly moved from its vision to unify social experiences. And Blackberry now shares the same grave as Windows Phone. Nonetheless, they remain bold experiments fuelled by an even bolder ambition: a unified social media hub. Microsoft’s implementation, while incomplete, serves as a testament to a host of possibilities that have yet to lose their luster.
I’m still skeptical of whether social media platforms will embrace this new vision instead of severing third-party app support. And while commercial services like HootSuite and Tweetdeck are heading in the right direction, I don’t think they empower an individual on a social level the way People Hub did. It’s an experiment that deserves another shot in 2020.
