Selfies: An Experimental New Social App

Posted By Sandy Berger in App Picks, Mobile, Photography

BreakingModern — Taking selfies is a proven phenomenon. Selfies of celebrities and world leaders have gone viral and generated millions of views on the Internet. In fact, selfies are so popular that the word itself was added to the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary last year. The popularity of the selfie trend has led Automattic, the esteemed company behind WordPress, to create a new social app called Selfies.

Selfies Galore

The Selfies app is in its infancy. Automattic decided recently to put it out there in order to get people’s opinions and comments, wanting to know if it’s a viable app. This early or beta release lets you get in on the ground floor and actually help develop the app. You can direct your comments directly to Automattic at the Selfies feedback site. If you love to take selfies, this may be the one for you. Currently it’s available only for Android on Google Play, but if it proves popular Automattic will certainly expand it to other mobile devices.

Selfies has a simple interface that is, of course, easy to use. Just click your photo, rotate and/or flip as necessary and then use the included filters to personalize your selfie. You can then share your selfie with others by simply tapping the Share icon. Sharing is available through email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media.

You can react to other people’s selfies by sending your own images or captions in response to theirs, which can turn into a fun interaction. All the Selfies shared through this app are automatically made public. If, however, you want to delete a Selfie, it is very easy to do.

At this time, you don’t even have to sign up to use the Selfies app. On Selfie FAQ page the developers have stated,

“We made an effort to find the ‘quickest time to fun’ in this app — get users to post and enjoy images right away instead of making them go through the numbing series of sign ups, logins, Facebook and Twitter connections, etc. that are common in other apps.”

More information at that page hints that they have big plans for this app, including the ability to subscribe to specific feeds and expansion to other mobile venues if the app proves popular.

The Selfies app is very basic, but the developers have made a commitment to it. And basic can be good – can be great, actually. For the moment, Selfies is constantly being updated. If you look in the Google Play Store and the Apple iTunes Store, you will find a wide variety of Selfie-type apps, but what makes this one different is the relationship with Automattic and WordPress. Back in May of 2014 Automattic raised $160 million for new projects. Their success with WordPress, Jetpack and Gravatar is amazing. These guys have a lot of pull, commitment, knowledge and money. It will be interesting to see if they can get people to be loyal to just one Selfie app.

For BMod, I’m Sandy Berger.

All Screenshots: Sandy Berger