5 Interesting Social iPhone Apps Released in the Past Month
By: Hillel Fuld
As the App Store continues to explode past the 500,000 apps mark, discovery of new and interesting apps is becoming increasingly difficult. In fact, I find myself relieved when browsing the iPad App Store, since it has approximately a quarter of the apps that iPhone store has, making it more user-friendly and manageable.
While the app discovery problem gets worse, consumers have blogs to rely on for finding the new and exciting apps out there. Developers are the ones that are truly suffering trying to get their apps noticed. Lucky for them, there are many players trying the crack the discovery issue, and our SDK, which if you are a developer, you should sign up for, is going to offer a unique and game-changing solution.
Meanwhile, check out these 5 interesting apps released in the past month that focus on photography, social, and news. Each and every one is a gem that is worth the download:
- Batch
This app solves a press elementary problem with social photo sharing. Yes, there is Instagram, PicPlz, and many others operating in this space, but they all offer the ability to edit a photo and share it. What happens if you want to share a group of photos with your social graph? Take an event for example. You are attending an event and want to tweet all the photos you took at the event. How do you do that? With Batch it is pretty simple and the UI is fantastic.
Batch also has an entire network around the batches being shared, similar to the way Instagram lets you view the stream. The only issue I found with Batch was the inability to edit the message you tweet when sharing a batch. As of now, the tweet reads something along the lines of “Check out my batch of photos” with a link to the batch. That is spammy and probably won’t generate a high CTR. I know I would never click a link that is preceded with the words “Check out”. Something tells me a fix for this issue is around the corner.
- Mobli
This app is a little more difficult to explain. Basically, Mobli, which recently got a $4 million investment from high profile investors including Leonardo DiCaprio (yes, yes, the dude from Titanic), is a social photo and video sharing app that allows users to see a real time feed of photos from around the globe and comment or share them. Sounds pretty similar to so many other services, right? Well, in a way, it is. In more ways though, it is not.
The main differentiating factor I think, between Mobli and other photo sharing apps (besides the video feature of course) is its UI. Simply put, it’s beautiful. Mobli, unlike other services does not focus on the person, but the tags and the things that person is seeing, right now. It is super interesting and seems to be getting nice traction. My only issue with Mobli, and one that I brought to the attention of the Mobli team is that the app crashes occasionally on iOS5. When the app works, it is works well and has a super user experience.
- Oink
Out of all the apps in this post, I have been using Oink the most. Besides the name, the app is pretty fantastic. First, let’s start with the fact that the creator of Oink is none other than Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com. Putting aside the fact that I hate people who don’t respond on Twitter and Rose leads the pack, Kevin is one super smart entrepreneur and just the fact that he is behind Oink had me downloading it as soon as it was released.
Now, what is Oink? Well, as Kevin says himself, it is really an experiment Kevin recently started a company called Milk that will be releasing many products in the coming years, Oink being the first. OK, but what is Oink? Well, Rose explains it well in the video below but in simple words, it is a social network about things.
Oink is to things what Foursquare is to places. If Kevin has his way, people will be launching Oink when trying to decide where to get the best waffle in LA, the best suits in NY, or the best customer service in London. My problem with Oink, and one Rose is going to have to address sooner or later, is that geeks are using Oink and the main items I am seeing in the app are iPhones, Macbooks, and iPads. That doesn’t really help me very much to know that geeks like Apple, does it? Also, someone please tell me how the heck to delete an Oink.
- News360
There are many fantastic apps on iPhone for consuming content. There is Pulse, Flyscreen, Flipboard (coming soon), not to mention all the apps from publishers like the NY Times and others. Truth be told, they are all fantastic. News360 is the latest of the bunch, and to say it is an interesting app would be an understatement. For starters, News360 is one of, if not the best app on the BlackBerry Playbook. It is also available for Windows Phone, Android, iPad, and the Web. Like I said, interesting.
The UI of 360 on iPhone might actually be the best of the crowd and the navigation in the app is truly beautiful. Try it, you will see what I mean. Basically, you choose your topics of interest and the app shows you the latest articles for those as well as top news in other main categories. One of the issues I had was the missing feature to view ALL of the articles in your favorite topics, as opposed to viewing articles for each category. I told the developer about this and was told, it is in the works. Happy to hear because I am really enjoying the app.
- Chime In
OK I have to be honest with this one. I am not sure it is good enough to take my attention away from Twitter or Google+, which from what I understand, is the goal of Chime in. Chime in is first and foremost a Web-based social network created by Bill Gross, the owner of many popular Twitter clients such as Ubertwitter and Echofon. The reason this app made this list is the fact that Gross is behind it and that a friend on Twitter, Susan Cooper, swears by it.
Well from the fairly little time I spent using Chime in, the concept is pretty simple. While on other platforms, you follow people, with Chime in, you follow tags or as Gross puts it, parts of people. I for example, love tech. I also love politics, but won’t tweet too much about the latter since most of my followers don’t particularly care about my political opinions. With Chime in, they could follow my tech content only or my political commentary exclusively. It is an interesting concept to say the least. You can read more about it here and here.
So why haven’t I used it too much? Well, today, many companies are competing over what is being called the “Attention graph” of the user. Let’s just put it this way. There is only so much time in the day and given my time on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, blogging, and working (yes, I still have to work for a living), not too much time left for another service. What Chime in would have to do is capture me on such a level that I would be willing to abandon one of my other favorite services, which is not something it did on my first few visits to the site/app.
That’s all folks. Those are five super interesting and innovative services for consuming content and sharing it, whether it is photos or news. All of the above apps are free and definitely worth the download, at least to try them out and see if they capture your attention graph. Some will, some won’t. Go get em!
