Instagram Launches its first standalone Photo And Video Messaging App ‘Bolt’, Releasing its initial phase rollout for iOS and Android, Only in Singapore, South Africa, and New Zealand.
Wait Hold up, what? Instagram did what!! Hold up, Instagram which is been owned by Facebook, the same Facebook that tried to buy SnapChat, Has now instantly lunched ‘Bolt’ a SnapChat alternative. apparently this is TRUE(Confirmed).
IF Facebook with a budget of “$159.67 Billion” cannot buy you, apparently they’ll make you, not you, but a better-clone like you, this is what happened to SnapChat.
Lets Roll-back to ‘Nov 13, 2013’, When the news first broke on wsj, that Facebook wants & tried to buy SnapChat for $3B In Cash, and SnapChat Declined the offer.
Why Did Facebook Try to Buy SnapChat?
Facebook Age Dynamics were moving too fast out, meaning that younger people were looking for other social networks to explore and share their moments and SnapChat was one of the exploration that young facebookies found and they flocking in(Snapchat) by the millions.
Now that SnapChat is History to Facebook and its affiliates(Instagram), Facebook yesterday(29/07/2014), Lunched a Snapchat, Taptalk, Mirage, Twitter, Vine international Alternative, called ‘Bolt’ Exclusive to Singapore, South Africa, and New Zealand on iOS and Android.
Designed for lightning-fast, ephemeral one-to-one video and photo messaging, Bolt was accidentally outed in promo banners that appeared on Instagram last Thursday. Now the company is officially trickling out Bolt in hopes of powering visual communication with your closest friends and family.
The download links won’t work if you’re not in these three countries. Instagram says it picked them because they each feature high Instagram usage, deeply interconnected communities, high penetration of Android Ice Cream Sandwich, and speak English. This makes them good testing analogues to its home market where its not ready to push yet. The plan is to get the kinks out before releasing the app worldwide, including in the United States. Instagram wouldn’t comment on complaints from other developers that already have apps named ‘Bolt’.
Facebook itself already offers News Feed, Messenger, Groups, Paper, Slingshot, WhatsApp (Instant Chat), Instagram’s feed and Direct. Yet Instagram tells us that it’s confident the ‘fast-first’ app will be very popular and won’t cannibalize Facebook’s expansive roster.
I’m not so sure. Eliminating a few taps from the photo sharing process just doesn’t seem like a big enough deal for people to use a whole new app. And if it is, Bolt already has two young competitors in Taptalk and Mirage that look and work so similar, some will call Bolt a clone, So Am I.
First of all, you can’t try to Buy an App(SnapChat) and when the deal goes sideways, you turn around and and build a better lookalike, under a different name(Instagram), of the company you own. its definitely a Snapchat Clone.
How Bolt Works
You sign up for Bolt with your phone number — no Instagram or Facebook account required. It sucks in your phone’s contacts and you can select to pull any of them into your Favorites list. You’re then given the Bolt camera. Rather than a standard shutter button, the faces of all your friends in your Favorites list are shown as a scrollable row across the bottom of the screen. Tapping one of their ugly mugs instantly sends them the photo with a single touch, which is supposedly Bolt’s big value proposition. Tap and hold to send someone a video. Taptalk and a similar set of face-buttons for sending photos, though with a pane of boxes instead of overlayed circles. Mirage looks almost identical.
On Bolt can only share to one person at a time, and have to re-shoot to send to more. There’s no uploading shots from your camera roll. A few buttons at the top let you switch the selfie mode, turn on your flash, or overlay big white text similar to Snapchat.
When (if) you receive a Bolt, you’ll get a notification in the top center of the app. Once you’ve viewed a Bolt, you swipe it away to delete it as the photos are ephemeral(Lasting a very short time). You can also choose to reply with a Bolt, or send a text reply overlayed over a blurred version of the Bolt you received, similar to Facebook’s standalone app Slingshot.
Instagram tells us that Bolt is useful because it’s so quick. The company says that right now it’s relatively cumbersome to go through the three to ten steps to send a photo from a mobile messaging app. But similar to the “Speed improvements” release notes in many updates, I think people will ignore that feature.
Just imagine trying to get your friend to use Bolt. “It only takes one tap to send a photo!” I imagine the response would be “Wait, doesn’t it only take a few to send one with SMS or Facebook Messenger, and they let me send whatever I want?”
Successful social mobile apps tend to have a standout feature that makes them compelling and immediately worthy of word of mouth.
1) Instagram combines filters with a sharing feed.
2) Snapchat has self-destructing photos.
3) WhatsApp made international texting free.
The Secret is anonymish.
Even those that are only doing okay tend to have something special about them. Frontback’s diptychs put selfies in context. Even Facebook’s oft-derided Slingshot app has something unique in reply-to-unlock.
Bolt doesn’t.
And in case you think it does, Bolt will have to compete with TapTalk and Mirage, which both look and work very similar to it. They’re both just getting started, though Mirage apparently hit 200,000 downloads in the first 24 hours, and was the #4 overall free iOS app in the US and the #1 free social app.
Taptalk’s Android app apparently has 5,000 to 10,000 downloads on Android That shows there’s some initial interest in the idea, but I’m not sure people will stick with these apps.
Bolt might be useful for people who incessantly photo message with just their spouse or best friends. From the screenshare demo I saw, it does seem a bit fun because it’s so lightweight and fast.
It does have one powerful weapon to fight competitors. Instagram will be promoting Bolt app with in-app banners just like the leaked ones from last week.
Either way, Will have to wait and see if people will Bit on this Instagram Standalone App.
