Apple TV+ is using Twitter‘s extended video time in a clever marketing ploy to get them hooked on one of its latest series. The streaming platform has released the entire first episode of Silo on the social media site just ahead of the season finale. This is thanks to Twitter’s recently added feature which allows Blue subscribers to upload videos up to two hours long, but will it pull more traffic across to Apple TV+?
The series is based on the post-apocalyptic book series of the same name written by American writer Hugh Howey, where humanity has been forced to live in a silo that goes deep underground due to the outside having become too toxic to survive. Generations upon generations have now existed in the silo, for so long that they cannot remember what led to them having to live this way in the first place, but what they do know is that going outside is a death sentence.
The series has a stellar cast with Rebecca Ferguson, Rashida Jones, David Oyelowo, and Dame Harriet Walter playing lead roles. It was released on Apple TV+ on May 5, with the first two episodes released together and the rest released on a weekly basis. The final episode concluding the first season will be released on June 30, with the second season already confirmed. Silo has received praise from audiences and critics, as well as crime/thriller writer Stephen King. The only issue is, being an Apple original, it hasn’t quite seen the viewing figures that it deserves, so pushing it on Twitter may not be the worst thing.
This may mark the first time that a series episode or film has been deliberately released on Twitter after there have been numerous incidents of users somehow releasing entire movies on the platform, some of them still in theatres at the time. Whether or not this experiment will be deemed a success depends on if Apple sees an increase in viewers on the show, but this might become a tactic that other platforms may hop onto in a bid to gain our attention and drag us to their content.