Sean Parker relaunches Airtime, a video chat room for watching – together. Social networks make us lonely, and messaging feels transactional. There’s still no vibrant, real-time place to hang out with friends online. That’s why four years after Sean Parker’s chat roulette website Airtime fell flat, he’s reviving it as a mobile chat room where friends can share photos, music, and videos that they all experience simultaneously. Launching on iOS and Android today, Airtime wants to simulate what it’s like to be in the same room with your favorite people, instead of divided by asynchronous News Feeds where we lob Likes at each other. Parker tells me that unlike broadcast social media, “people can have the expectation of privacy, intimacy, and closeness – a kid of humanity rather than everything having to be some form of theater or performance.”
At its core, Airtime is about adding 10, 20, or even 50 friends to a room that becomes your persistent third-space online. You can watch our quick video demo below Off The Air, Under The Radar Your Digital Clubhouse. How to engage your app’s community on social media. So many factors may have worked for making your app popular. It may have been a great PR campaign, or you hit the right chord with your influencer marketing strategy. The point is that all these viral factors are short-lived. Once the initial buzz dies down, most apps seem to lose their mark with their audience and users.
What keeps people coming back? Our best speaker lineup, ever. This year’s edition of TNW Conference in Amsterdam includes some of the biggest names in tech. Learn more A while back, I read an awesome post by Buffer’s Kevan Lee, which listed the apps on the home screens of the biggest marketers in the business. So here’s the question: what makes a few apps more popular than the rest and how can app marketers build a better audience for themselves? How can you build a long-term relationship with app users? The answer to this question may lie in building a community of loyal and devoted users.
But first, recognize benefits of having a community for your mobile app: Start small. This iPhone App Made Me Love Voice Messages Again. If it was socially acceptable, I’d make my outgoing voicemail message simply: “Don’t.” Heck, I hate listening to people’s long-winded rambling so much, I might do it anyway. I’m not alone in my disdain for people’s vocal brain dumps. In 2014, The New York Times reported on how millennials hate voicemail, and a year later, Forbes covered how companies like Coca-Cola and JPMorgan Chase have dumped it outright. What’s on tap for 2016? If there’s any justice, this will be the year voicemail dies a gruesome death.
But when the programmers behind Spotify put out Roger, an app that’s essentially a user-friendlier way to leave audio messages, it made me wonder if voice messages are as antiquated as I thought. Of course, Roger doesn’t bill itself as voicemail. Branding and comparisons aside, sending and receiving voice messages via Roger is a very smooth experience.
To connect to the free service, you simply download the app and enter your phone number. SEETY #mavilleenrose. “Chime” In On Video Chat Threads With This Intimate App. Texting is the quickest way to be misunderstood. With no facial cues or vocal tones, enthusiasm becomes sarcasm, jokes are read as cruelty. But while audio and video chat are vivid, its inconvenient to get both people on a call at the same time. Yet, a new iOS app called Chime combines the best parts of these media, plus sprinkles on some mustaches and top hats to keep it fun. Chime lets you record up to 20-second-long video clips and send them to a friend or group. Recipients can reply with their own clips, which get added to a visualized string of contributions that can be rewatched. Do we need another way to communicate, considering we already have Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Instagram Direct, email, SMS, and a dozen other channels?
Jared Morgenstern thinks so. A brash young man, confident in his instincts, Morgenstern opted to skip the notoriously critical “Zuck Review.” Something else was lost, though. Chime’s Jared Morgenstern (right) with his old boss Mark Zuckerberg. Navigation System Guides You Like a Local. This app crowdsources driving tips, warnings and tricks to make you drive smarter Mapkin is a driving app that can help you get around tricky maze roads like a local. Built with collaborative drivers in mind, it accepts and verifies tips from users so the voice navigation sounds more human than machine. Instead of just saying “Turn right in ten meters”, Mapkin will say “Turn a left at the light, just pass the gas station”. These kind of instructions pay particular attention to things someone behind the wheel might notice instead of what an orbiting satellite might find. People drive using notable landmarks, not lengths, and that’s how Mapkin overtakes a traditional GPS navigator. Aside from replacing the robotic approach used in purely machine-based GPS systems, Mapkin is knowledgable about places.
Watch the intro video below: The idea is for Mapkin to provide an experience of having a human area expert riding shotgun wherever you go. Mapkin.co. Remember Jelly? Here’s another iPhone app that wants to help with tough decisions. If you’re the type of person who takes an hour to decide what you’re making for dinner or whether you want an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, Flotsm is for you.
It’s a free iOS app that lets you get unbiased help making tough decisions, as well as lighthearted ones too. And it’s all anonymous. It’s also strikingly similar to the stagnant Jelly, created by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. Getting started is easy, just sign up with Facebook or your email and ask your first question. Now, if you’re a little shy to begin with (as I was), there are thousands of questions from other users to look through and give your perspective on. When you give an answer, it shows you what the person who asked the question gave as their preferred response and stats on other people’s choices as well. Another great advantage is that as well as being free to download, there are no advertisements on the app either… so far. While Jelly has seemingly flopped, Flotsm faces an uphill battle to do what Stone’s app never could. Pin & Tucker Shopping App Let's Your Friends Vote On What You Should (Or Shouldn't) Buy. Remember the days of group texting your girlfriends for some much-needed outfit approval or, in some cases, the red flag of disapproval?
Well, now there’s an app for that. Pin and Tucker is the Smartphone app that provides a second opinion on a potential purchase or ensemble option. So whether you’re shopping solo or just cannot decide what to wear, Pin and Tucker’s got you covered. Naturally I had to test this out and give you guys the scoop. My best friends and I are all on different schedules and my mother is not exactly retail's BFF, so shopping solo can be tacked onto my list of cardio-options-of-choice. It was only a matter of time before our Smartphones became our shopping buddies — and quite honestly, I am pretty jealous that I hadn’t thought of this application myself. Here's how it works! Step 1: Make A Profile After you've downloaded the app, create your personal profile. 2. 3. This step is super important. So, you have three options here. 4. 5. Images: Julia Horniacek. Meet Crossroad, A Nifty Little App To Create Collaborative Photo Albums. Chances are you recently went back from a wedding, a road trip or any other meaningful social event, and all your friends took a bunch of photos with their phones.
And yet, you won’t ever see these photos again, as they will stay in your friend’s camera roll forever. Crossroad is a new app for iOS and Android that lets you create collaborative albums in a few taps. It’s seamless, well-designed and useful in many occasions. “During my stag party, we took a lot of photos. Here’s how it works. You can quit the app, it will continue uploading your pictures in the background, or you can browse your friends’ photos in the meantime.
If you want to make this album public, you can get a web gallery that you can share with people who weren’t at your event. There are two key reasons why Crossroad is intrinsically viral. Second, it’s unlikely that all of your friends will upload photos at the same time. I first met the Crossroad team at a pitch event in Paris.
BackMeApp by Always. Pedigree Found - the real time lost dog app. Yik Yak - Ride the Yak.