Wednesday 31 July 2013

Just.me Chases Instagram With Quickie Selfies Plus Filters To Mask Your #Me Shot

TechCrunch
TechCrunch is a group-edited blog that profiles the companies, products and events defining and transforming the new web. 
thumbnail Just.me Chases Instagram With Quickie Selfies Plus Filters To Mask Your #Me Shot
Jul 31st 2013, 11:19, by Natasha Lomas

just-me selfie

Instagram’s narcissistic obsession with selfies has been well-documented. Turns out it’s also contagious — at least, if you’re in the business of trying to build a rival social property, as Just.me, a U.S. mobile messaging startup that wants to become a one-stop-messaging-cum-social-sharing-platform, undoubtedly is.  In an update to its iOS app just.me has added a new selfie message type, to pander to the (similarly) self-absorbed. The move underlines how mobile messaging, photo-sharing and social networking continue their not-so-slow-motion collision.

Version 1.2 of the just.me iOS app now includes selfies as the first option when you hit compose message — above compose a (text) message – to speed up posting that awesome #me shot. Once you’ve taken your selfie, the app also offers Instagram-style filters (and a moveable blur effect)  so you can be liberated from the self-consciousness of posting something photorealistic. And so your latest selfie has a chance of standing out from the other 50 you’ve previously posted. 

Selfies composed via just.me’s app interface are automatically hashtagged #selfie — “so that all users can browse through just.me's public feed to see selfies from just.me's global community of more than 150 countries”.  So, yeah, be sure you’re ready for your close-up before taking that quickie selfie and gifting it the Internet.

Just.me founder Keith Teare, partner at incubator Archimedes Labs (and co-founder of TechCrunch*), explained that selfies were already being posted to just.me’s public feed — so they wanted to come up with an easier way to create and browse selfie content.  "Users now have a single place to post and see the best selfies from around the world. Given that users are increasingly using their mobile devices to be social – without the need to join a social network – it was a natural step for us to fully support and embrace the emergence of the selfie as a new way to communicate and message your thoughts, feelings and disposition with friends or the public,” he said in a statement.

Just.me’s app launched on iOS back in April, and pulled in some 250,000 users in its first three months — before also expanding onto the Android platform. Android app users will presumably also get their own quickie selfie feature in due course. 

Just.me’s v1.2 app update also adds an iPad-optimised interface, with support for portrait and landscape orientation. Its Android app interface has been optimised for tablets too. 

*Disclosure: In addition to TC co-founder Teare himself being involved, just.me has raised funding from (among others) CrunchFund — which is of course tied up with TechCrunch in several ways, including the fact that our parent company AOL is an investor.


App.net Delicious Digg Evernote Facebook Google Bookmarks Google Plus Instapaper LinkedIn StumbleUpon Tumblr Twitter
You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com.

If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

No comments:

Post a Comment