Hey Hunters!
I'm Pixtory's founder and it feels great to be launching our product in this community.
@kwdinc , thank you so much for hunting us here.
At Pixtory we're attempting to transform the mobile home screen into a gateway of content through wallpaper stories. What's a wallpaper story? An original, engaging short piece of content with a beautiful full-screen picture to go with it. Together it's a great new way to know the world!
Here’s how it works: You get 10 enriching wallpaper stories on your home screen every morning. Simply double tap on the wallpaper to read the stories behind all of them.
Our wallpaper stories are curated by contributors from all over the world. It’s a great way to fill the day’s idle moments with something enriching. Read them on the way to work or while waiting for a meeting to start. You’ll find factual and fictional ‘wallpaper-stories’ about love, the world, everyday urban life, health, and more. These wallpaper stories make you smile, think or get inspired. All in a span of two minutes!
There have been other home screen products in the market but we found them to be intrusive. By contrast. Pixtory is differentiated because our content is masked as a wall paper and it transforms into stories only when the user engages with it. Plus our content is diverse, high quality and curated from around the world.
We’re super excited to share Pixtory with the Product Hunt community to get valuable feedback and insights. We think that this could introduce a new way of consuming content seamlessly on your mobile. Would love to hear your feedback and answer any questions.
Note: We have Pixtory on iOS as well, but it comes without the Home Screen feature. You can still consume the wallpaper stories in-app and set them as your wallpaper, of course.
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@rohan_karumbaiah@kwdinc ok obviously a cool product...
for things like this my Finance Hat always seems to be begging to be put on [think: Harry Potter] and since this is 'not truly' needed or useful [no offense] even though I'm all about being inspired every day.. the elephant in the room question is how are you going to make money at this?
[please don't say Ads :( ]
Even if you manage to get contributors to do it for free, you still have server space, hosting, developers to pay right?
@exlemor@kwdinc Thanks for trying the product :)
We'll have commerce propositions and sponsored content [ yeah, ads in some form:( ] . The ads would be native brand stories from our community.
I'm sharing a few sample pieces that we've received from our contributors below that showcase how Sponsored Content and commerce propositions could shape up with time. We also plan to syndicate this wallpaper-story content to different mobile first players - early stages and exploring a few partnerships here.
And yes, Contributors will have a rev share on any Revenue we earn off their content
Loved the concept and the execution (from what the video suggests). The interactive elements on the homepage are nicely done too. Definitely trying out this one. 👍
@nitprashant thanks so much for your feedback... Would love to hear any feedback from you as you use the product.
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Hunter
Pixtory does something unique. It has created a new language of wallpaper stories and has made it seamless to consume it right on the mobile homescreen. You wake up to new wallpaper stories every morning and can engage with them through simple gestures such as double-tap and two-finger touch. It's a seamless and non-intrusive homescreen product which allows the user consume content easily.
Pixtory is specifically focused on the idle time that all of us have during the day - between meetings, waiting in a queue etc. The next time you have a minute or two, you can simply double tap on your homescreen and start consuming your wallpaper stories. The content comes from their global community of contributors and goes through an editorial process as well. They do have an iOS app as well but it comes without the homescreen feature.
While the app is well executed, I didn't like the copyright message position and that it is always visible. What license are these images available under? I am not sure if it is free to use. Pixabay app for example is very clear that the images available are free to use and hence contain no copyrighted information in them.
@chakkaradeep Thanks for using Pixtory. Yes, the images aren't free to use without the copyright attribution and hence the positioning. You can use the images as your wallpaper but it does come with the copyright. Our content changes everyday and hence we have currently taken this route - more of a changing feed of wallpapers as opposed to a utility based one. I'll connect with you to further understand your point of view if that's ok.
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@rohan_karumbaiah in Android world I use a lot of wallpaper apps and they all surface free images. Same with iOS. Pixabay and wlppr also do the same. I personally avoid copyrighted images for my personal collection of wallpapers. For android, you should try Tapdeck which changes wallpaper how you have chosen to - every day, hour or mins - and the images are not copyrighted. Another good example of is also Arrow Laucher in Android which sets Bing daily wallpaper and they don't put the copyrighted information in the wallpaper but clearly have it in their app.
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@chakkaradeep oh forgot to mention Muzei which handles the copyrighted information very well. I haven't used your Android app yet as I don't have my android phone with me but there are plenty of apps that deal with copyrighted information differently than having it visible.
@chakkaradeep point taken on the copyright positioning - we'll look into it. In Android we don't have the copyright on the image (once it's set as a wallpaper) ad we aren't downloading the image to the users gallery. We'll look into iOS as well to handle this different.
Tapdeck seems to be down for some reason for sometime - We've just had a chance to look at their video but haven't been able to try the product. Will check out Arrow.
Thanks a ton for these inputs.. this is useful
This almost looks like what Windows does with their screen savers. I like that this is for Mobile. This will be more powerful, If it can be customized to user's preferences and only shows stories more relevant to him/her. Almost anything could be a story including news. This can be one more channel/medium for content consumption. Congratulations.
@sridhar_kondoji Thanks for your inputs. Yes, we definitely need to personalize content to the user. It's something that we are working towards.
And like you just said, this can be a brand new channel of content consumption which is seamless and a layer above all apps.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
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Great App .. Tried It !! Loved It !!
Nice Concept .. Kudos to Pixtory Team :)
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