Apple just introduced Business Connect as its new free tool for businesses of all sizes, although especially for small businesses, allowing them to manage the data of their respective activities that will later reach users through applications such as Maps, Messages, Wallet or Siri, among othersbeing able to even encourage reservations or orders through specialized platforms directly within Apple Maps.
Business Connect may sound familiar to what other companies like Google already offer with their My Businesswhich allows businesses to manage their data that will later be shown to users through Google search service cards and from its Google Maps application for maps.
Twitter also joined relatively recently by enabling businesses to also provide a higher level of information in their respective professional profiles with Spotlight, including physical location and hours of public availability.
The new competition to Facebook and Google
Businesses will be able to sign up using their IDs with Apple, and once verified, claim and manage the information that will appear on their business information cards.
Despite its arrival, Apple Maps will continue to take into account the information of the businesses that exist on Yelp, still maintaining the integration with this platform, although with Business Connect you can allow other types of information that with the integration with Yelp you will not. It is possible, in addition to carrying out their own promotions.
In this way, Apple strengthens its ecosystem of services, in clear competition with Facebook and Google, arriving at a time when the company is also strengthening its position in the advertising market.
The advantages of Business Connect are, on the one hand, the possibility that businesses can provide a higher level of information and have control of their data, and on the other, that users can have the information completely up to date.
According to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Services:
Apple Business Connect gives all business owners the tools they need to connect with customers more directly and have more control over how billions of people view and interact with their products and services every day.
More information: Apple
