“I think you guys are really going to like this. I mean, I hope. It would be preferable if you did.”
Not the best pitch, but that’s how Taylor Swift announced The Swift Life™, a new app for all things Taylor, on Wednesday. The app, which is set to arrive in “late 2017,” comes from Glu, the folks that made millions of dollars with the in-app purchase minefield of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. The Swift Life, meanwhile, looks a whole lot like Kim Kardashian’s other app, the one that offers slices of her daily world and is bluntly titled Kim Kardashian West Official App. The Swift Life is being pegged as some hybrid of Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter that allows Swift fans to share stuff as an online community—and, if they’re blessed enough, to interact with the pop star—presumably requiring users to pay small fees for each press of a button. After all, this is the same artist who turned ticket-buying into an incentivization program for fans to buy her merchandise a couple of months ago. Say what you will about Taylor Swift, but she is good at making money.
The Swift Life™ is going to have other exclusive Swift items, including “Taymoji™,” a word that I just died a little bit inside typing out.
This announcement might explain why Swift has been so engaged with fans on social media as of late, giving them a preview of what their new existences will be like once they buy The Swift Life.
The old Taylor isn’t dead; she just moved behind a paywall.
