At first sight, Tappy looks like every other photo-sharing app, to be completely honest. It wasn't until someone invited me to a chat room based on a photo that was taken, that I "got it." You've turned everyday photo-sharing moments into opportunities to spark conversation.
Where did Tappy come from, @dgould? I've been following Chill since you were working on the real-time conversation platform and later a video streaming service.
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@rrhoover Thanks. That's my worry--if you just see the headline description, Tappy is "yet another photo sharing app". But our customers who start actively using it says it feels completely different. I'd love the PH community's input on how to get people far enough in that they can experience it.
Chill went through a bunch of iterations--we signed up a lot of users but ultimately Hollywood was a very difficult industry to work in. We still had runway though and started experimenting with this. There were a lot of things that were interesting but didn't feel right. So, we just kept building till it did--thankfully we have an amazing team. But it was more of an evolution and collaboration than a single moment of "aha!"
Thanks @espreedevora for posting about us!
Several of us from Tappy are on Product Hunt. I've worked on social software for about 15 years and this is the most fun I've had building something. I'll be around to answer questions; I think @briannorgard and @scotthurff who heads UI & design are both Product Hunters and will come by too.
While we just launched, we've been surprised by the engagement so far with Tappy—our average messages/person is much higher than I thought it would be.
I'd love to see what you think. [If you don't have any contacts on Tappy, email me at dan@chill.com and I'll send you my cell so you can have someone around to send messages to.]
Hey, I'm the guy who designed the app. Thanks for the votes, everyone.
We focused on making the act of sending photos really fast and fun while maintaining the joy of consuming photos you get, too.
A lot of camera-first apps sacrifice the consumption experience: we found that it's tough to reply and immerse yourself in the content. Plus, it's not like all of us are spewing photos all the time to people.
That's why there's live chat behind every photo, and a 24-hour stream of photos you've received.
And there's TappyCam: an always-on, non-obtrusive, gestural-based camera.
Finally, we start you off connected to the people in your address book, but you can add anybody in the app as a contact to start sending them photos.
Plus, we have an amazing mascot in Tappy the Dolphin ;) 🐬
That's the quick rundown; thanks for taking a look.
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Also for those who like it, @scotthurff did a lot of the prototyping in Quartz Composer. In the process he also made a tutorial that a lot of the product folks here should check out http://scotthurff.com/qc/
I liked the onboarding process where you text to verify, i think this is the first time i've seen that. Curious to hear your thoughts on that route vs the traditional text me a code, and if you are seeing people choose that option as their main way of verifying
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@Anderson760 thanks @Anerson760 -- it doesn't always work (especially across borders) and can be slow so @scotthurff actually designed a flow where we try the forward auth at the beginning and then try the reverse auth at the end if it can't rendez-vous. We'll keep the PH community in the loop to see how it goes.
@dgould@scotthurff Definitely keen to hear how that works. Combine "how to" and "sign up" into 1 action...much more frictionless onboarding IMO. Downloading and playing now!
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Oh, and mention a few of the key product aspects of Tappy:
* TappyCam is our gestural camera. It's always open for fast access. Swipe the Tappy Cam left for a selfie and up for Camera Roll. Press and hold the Tappy Cam to enlarge the photo area (by far the feature that gets the most attention)
* It's visual but it's a messaging app, not a social network. Social networks have great viral dynamics, but I think only a subset of people are very public. And they're already well-served by the tools out there (like FB, Intagram, etc). In particular, Tappy is primarily addressbook-based. The small set of people you'll want to message regularly are almost-certainly in your addressbook.
The social topology is a lot like text messaging: You can send to someone if you know their number. (But, blocking, etc are also available unlike in texting--we're trying to do a best-of.)
* Tap-to-Chat: Every photo on Tappy enables a live chat between friends. Simply tap the photo and start chatting. Chats are both private and lots of fun.
* 24-Hour Content Expiration: In the app, we try not to show context after the 24-hour mark.
* Tappy the Dolphin 🐬 :')
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