Amity - A messaging experience, with a new level of live interaction

Haven't tried the product yet but the design looks seriously on point. My fear is this will become little more than a design concept for Messenger where the coolest features will be copied.. I mean.. "inspired by" :/ I think it would take a massive 10x experience to migrate users and this feels more like 1.2x which nonetheless should be applauded. Good luck team and I will definitely follow your progress

Hello Product Hunt, and thanks to @chrismessina and @bentossell for helping us out! For the past 2 years, our startup (8 engineers and designers) has been living in a house working hard in secret to build Amity – a complete messaging experience, with a new level of live interaction. Communication is more than just words, yet the way we currently interact in existing messaging apps is nowhere close to what we experience in real-life. So we entered the house on day one with a mission to create a new communication experience that's more complete, more human, yet simple for anyone to use. Today, we’re excited to finally launch Amity, and share it with the Product Hunt community! Here is a highlight of the best features so far: • Live Mode – when two or more people are on the screen at the same time, special features activate. • Live emojis and live touch • Interactive messages – a new category of fun, low friction, 2-way messages. • Request messages – thinking of someone? Just tap one button to request photos, videos, and locations. • High fives – celebrate small victories anytime with your friends. • Everything in one place – send photos, videos, locations, voice, battery level, stickers, quick emojis, and more (without leaving the app). • Beautiful photo filters – created by a team of world-class photographers. • Group conversations – this is where it gets really interesting, especially with Live Mode and interactive messages... • Made for everyone – easily add friends by username, mobile number, or searching nearby • And much more. You can download the app now on iOS and Android (beta). (Note: The Android version has been released as a public beta. As a small team, we only have one (yet super awesome) Android developer, who is currently working hard to reach v1.0 for Android.) We'd love to invite you to try out Amity, and get your feedback so we can make it the best experience possible! P.S. Here is a Medium blog post about our story: https://medium.com/@amityapp/int... P.P.S. Pro tip for PH: You can drag the live emoji onto the screen for a surprise :)

We don't have a messenger problem, we have a value adding and identity problem...I don't see this making any big waves long term...I mean if we're talking about getting 1 million users that join today and leave tomorrow sure, every single messenger has done this. But solving a real issue for real people, especially a new generation that is proposing more decentralized access to their information, demanding transparency, demanding respected by the likes of Facebook when it comes to their privacy, and what that means to them, and their affordance and accessibility. I just don't get it...in a world crying out for problems to be solved, especially with transformative technology globally, to reimagine so much for the next billion people coming online. I just don't see this being part of the solution. People never wanted Facebook or Friendster or Myspace, they wanted value...an identify protocol for connecting and engaging when moving in and out of environments online, allowing them to communicate expressively regardless of the traditional constraints found in other mediums. The offerings that went above and beyond to establish a unified and ubiquitous value adding brand won in a big way and their was only one that did this right. Above all because they were actually defining "identity" not social behavior. Your identify protocol, which is something we are now in the midst of redefining thanks to Facebook. Everyday people hate bots they will never want bots they will never want a buzzword masquerading as a solution , what they want and will always demand even 300 years from now is value....that can be expressed with offerings working more intelligently in the way they were always meant to work, in harmony with culture, design that understands context and conditions and design that isn't just how it looks but how it works. Anonymous applications....identity for a new generation has to also be defined...you can see the terrible torment that even that having no real design theories in our marketplace or guidelines is reaching havoc on this world, people are dying, kids are being bullied, bomb threats after bomb threats...but yet we keep copy and pasting the same stuff and saying oh well who cares why we sit in our mansions and collect billions, by sucking value out of the world, we need to ask ourselves just because we can doesn't mean we should, lets ask them, the people we keep saying we serve what identity, privacy means to them. Treat people the way they want to be treated, not the way you want to be treated....because to do that, you have to ask them first....this never gets done no one ever bends down and instead of only caring about validating a pre conceived perception, gets these very people we say we are here to serve involved in the implementation. People have an energy problem, as humans we need energy to pay our taxes, make decisions, download apps, and experience the world around us. This app has complexity on top of complexity. We forget that people have to always fire someone else and hire you for the same job, and that doesn't mean they fire Facebook that could be they have to also fire their own perception of how this should work, if you aren't aligned in doing that better sticker packs won't keep your retention above the industry standard. best of luck but I would stress more than anything here as you build this ask the hard questions don't carbon copy interactions, expressions of yesterdays solutions to patch todays problems for a today generation, this will skip learning and it doesn't solve any real issues....doesn't allow you to think with a better perspective of the challenges of the people today and what they want out of life.

I'm a huge fan of this product. I've been following it for some time and am extremely excited to see it out living in the public! Huge shout-out to @jcheng, @pestov, @johnnychengx, @kieranthetwit, and any other members of the team! I'm eager to see how it's interface and fun additions add to the experience. I really want them to include a incentivized program. It is undoubtedly necessary to capture an audience... and quickly before a couple, other platforms get HUGE full public revamps soon. Nevertheless, I'm eager to see how this moves forward! Great job! P.S. I'm @as_austin on Amity!

The biggest problem with messaging apps like these on iOS vs. Android is that they can't interact with the default messaging layer. I absolutely love the flexibility of 3rd party messaging apps when I use Android devices, but when I use iOS, I never stray from iMessage and Messenger (simply because i get Facebook messages and I can't see them in-app anymore), because diluting my contact pool over multiple apps is a frustrating experience in fragmentation. It's hard to maintain and makes communication clunky. I understand that certain messaging apps are needed and have viable functionality, such as security or group offerings. But apps like these on iOS always have limited shelf life and appeal because they can't get natural mass adoption due to the iMessage walled garden. Great looking product, guys, but on iOS you have a nearly impossible task of lasting conversion to make.

Do we really need another chat app?

Thoughts on messengers in general... We've left the good path with them a while back, when everyone (not accusing Amity here) tried to be the next WhatsApp. That begins with phone number tie-in. I frequently am in six countries, using four SIM. Guess what happens, when I get a new phone and SIM from there? Yepp. While that might not be everyone's normality, going on a trip and buying a cheap local phone for Internet, is. Which is where WhatsApp fails, hope Amity doesn't. WhatsApp also fails if you want to have it on multiple devices. As does Telegram and some others. I switch fluidly from my desktop to my laptop to my 12" to my 9" and my phone. I don't want to have go digging for my phone while I am in the middle of work on another device. WhatsApp fails. Hope Amity will get a real (not a canned Web version) desktop client, and can run on more than one device at the same time. I'll definitely try it, but I guess that few of my friends will seriously consider it, if they have to have multiple accounts for each of their different SIM'd phones.

@johnnychengx Looks really cool. Exactly what I think iMessage 10 and Allo is aiming for. Do you support GIFs, because if you do I think we should talk.

Great team & great product. @johnnychengx is an incredible founder and I can't wait to see where this platform is going in the future. All the best 🎉🎉🎉

I had an uncontrollable smile when I saw (and heard) the *high five* function. Have told my fiancée to download this and will try it out with her. Nice design, team!