Cap

A backchannel for fun with your friends (beta)

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A backchannel for fun with your friends (beta)

1 follower

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Launch tags:Tech

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Render Sandboxes: a computer for every agentRun untrusted code safely. Idle sandboxes cost nothing

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Blurb

It's interesting how so many apps are thinking through short-term sharing and its ability to drive more sharing / reduce privacy concerns / etc. The question is how do you scale something like this beyond "fad" (taptalk) to utility (snapchat)?

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12yr ago

Product Hunt

@micah do you really think Taptalk is a fad? I still use it daily with a few friends and family. Hard to say if it will stick with me as long as Snapchat (and iOS8's new messaging could change my behavior) but so far it's stuck with me. It's still the fastest app to share photos and videos one-on-one that I've used. cc @ogtfaber @abramdawson

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12yr ago

TD4W

@rrhoover @micah I think all these social apps become utilities over time, if they stick...initially they're all "fads", but Taptalk has for sure become a utility for me.

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12yr ago

Blurb

@rrhoover I do - whats the long-term utility in TapTalk (how do you link to that page)? Whats the potential value/revenue? you use it with a few friends, but do you actively use it, or is it reactive? Seems that is the common progression: "woo hoo! this app is cool!" > "my friends still use it! It has to be cool, right?" > "damn it, one friend still sends me stuff on this app." > "I dont really want to delete it, but I wish I could." > delete. Taptalk is in stage 2 or 3 for me.

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12yr ago

Loot Character

@micah do you think that those stages are necessary to a social networks lifecycle? (I think @abramdawson was suggesting this). I can't remember if answers to those questions were immediately apparent during Twitter's rise. On the revenue point, came across this today by @joshelman https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/how-w... Not sure where I personally stand on the revenue issue.

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12yr ago

Blurb

@andrewfarah I dont think its the same for social networks. SN usage is driven entirely by your friends and the content shared. Once invested, its hard to bail out. Its why FB is so dominant, there is just no need for anything else. Re: revenue - I don't think revenue means money. It means value. Just wrote this about market choice: https://medium.com/p/3-lessons-t...

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12yr ago

Free

Maker

Thanks @hutchins @rrhoover and team for the love! Our aim here is to try out a set of silly ideas/mechanics we've been experimenting with, open it to a few more folks, and test where we've missed the mark / made something useful. The general framework of thought behind Cap and our other work is to build out the backstage*, the inverse of success theatre*. We have quite a bit more coming as @alexhorre mentioned, so we're really damn grateful for people's time and help as we build. That said, it's been really fun watching the positive response so far. See you on Cap and let me know if you have any questions *See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dra... *http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/20...

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12yr ago

@dtrinh The idea of success theater is really interesting. You're basically shooting for digital vulnerability. I'm guessing the ephemerality of Cap, Snapchat and others take the importance off the perfection of the photo and gear it more towards your intended audience in that moment. The moment itself is downplayed a bit too since it's not attached to your profile forever like on Instagram. The psychology behind this is fascinating. (I'm sorry for the camera/photography puns, they weren't intended)

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12yr ago

@dtrinh I see some similarities between what you're going for (at least as I understand it) and Path. Reading from the "backstage" article you linked to, one key is that the audience is not present; backstage you're performing for another group: the performers themselves. However, as far as I can tell with Cap, anyone can add anyone else and see their caps. Aren't we therefore still acting for a public audience? The logical leap I'm missing is how limiting the post to 24hrs creates a backstage mentality. A limited, reciprocal friending model like Path (especially in the early days) seems like a better strategy to change behaviors by creating a different audience for our digital sharing.

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12yr ago

Homebrew’s 50+ HR Resources for Startups

PHers - stop using this app. it was great when just us cooler hipper early adopter influencers were on it. now you're ruining it with pictures of your mundane life.

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12yr ago

@rrhoover I think apps like Caps create do a few things: 1) Drive awareness with a novelty mechanic 2) Awareness leads to instant market for their second app Libre (seems to be a writing app of some kind) 3) Use as a test for UI interactions. Interestingly enough, it's #3 that brought me back again and again. I had fun interacting with the UI more than the message itself. That's a paradigm not yet seen in messaging—actually Path had that in the beginning.

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12yr ago

Product Hunt

@alexhorre re: #2, @dtrinh and team reveal on their homepage that Cap isn't the only app they're working on. He shared a little bit about it with me a few days ago privately and I'm not sure how much he wants to share publicly yet... Danny? ;) This "constellation app" strategy (companies building multiple independent yet interconnected apps) seems to be increasingly common. Facebook/Instagram (Slingshot, Hyperlapse, Poke, the upcoming Bolt) cc @mikeyk, Foursquare (Foursquare 8.0, Swarm) cc @dens, and Path (Path, Path Talk) cc @davemorin are a few that come to mind. It's reminiscent of mobile gaming, where big studios eventually build a platform around their portfolio and effective cross-promotion between titles is the key to sustainable success.

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12yr ago

Accidental Tech Podcast - Uncomfortable in My Pants

@rrhoover Apps are the new features. Apps are the new LP. Or, as I like to think of it: Apps are media. Stay tuned, we have some interesting things coming down the pipe.

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12yr ago

Product Hunt

@davemorin bingo. Apps and games are media and that's why Buzzfeed is spending $50M of its funding from a16z building games. cc @stevesi @awesomeringerud, @jonsteinberg, @danoshinsky

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12yr ago

Mute.vc

@rrhoover I wish @Snapchat would break out stories into its own app! It feels like its getting a little crowded.

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12yr ago

Product Hunt

@thomasmeagher that's an interesting thought. Care to comment, @evanspiegel? :)

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12yr ago

Product Hunt

I've been playing with Cap for a few days now. As expected, coming from @dtrinh and team, it's beautiful. Here's a shot I took last night:

Many people hate on new photo/video messaging apps, claiming the market's saturated and while that's true, there's always more room to explore new ways of communicating with people. For example, MessageMe has been one of the primary ways I communicate with my family back home. That said, why did you decide to build this of all things, @dtrinh?

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12yr ago

Wealthfront

Hunter

Beautiful app from @dtrinh, one of the original designers at Path. It’s a great and simple way to share all the fun stuff in your life that never feels right to post everywhere else. I love the simple grid of the timeline and how videos and photos can coexist so well.

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12yr ago

Free

Maker

@hutchins I love that you love it because all you need is love

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12yr ago

@rrhoover @davemorin "apps are the new features" is a great definition that pushes back on the early notion "are you a product or just a feature to copy." It all comes down to the product vision; what are the goals Caps wants to measure? Similar to say, North, who'll launch a series of apps—each app may fail or be successful; but each sequential app builds on the prior's marketshare until the precipice is eclipsed and you have a compounded winner to scale. You just need $ runway. To be honest, Caps is a novelty in the sense that functionally, it layers on the friction to message a friend; the user is the UI in communication—so I'll go to iMessages immediately to just be with "friends" or Messenger by extension of FB's dominance. For me, Caps is a market test for UI interactions using messaging as a vehicle. Internalize that pattern library, and ingest them into the next app. My 2 cents. P.S. I love Caps.

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12yr ago

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