Facebook is cloning Taptalk to compete with Snapchat | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is cloning Taptalk to compete with Snapchat

ft.com

16 pointsciaranoleary19 comments

Currently my Instagram social stream is being polluted with all kind of people I don't know or don't want to know thanks to Facebook's social integration. I shudder to think what would happen if Facebook would connect their social graph to a direct and intimate photo sharing service.

Ultimately two things are broken:

- Facebook's idea of what social is does not mesh with how most people see it. They seem to have huge problems dealing with non-public interactions and what that would mean for their business.

- Facebook's product design culture seems to have a hard time breaking out of the Silicon Valley bubble and adding stuff of relevance to actual people's day to day existence.

as links to FT can be cumbersome: a screenshot pic.twitter.com/bMjXYzxp5F

I'm Onno, one of the founders of Taptalk - happy to answer any questions here!

What is Taptalk?

Again, after Poke? http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2457866,00.asp

I think they only killed Poke a couple of weeks ago too. Although Zuckerberg did call it a 'joke' quite a while ago.

Anyone out here that's using TapTalk and can comment on it's quality? Is it useful/fun? What makes it better than Snapchat?

three things: i) it is much faster, 10x. it's one tap to send a video or message to someone by just holding their profile pic in a gird ii) it's purely 1-1 so every message is for you, no broadcasting iii) it's very authentic as there are no retakes, filters, etc

i) It's two taps to send someone a video on Snapchat, so I'm not sure how this could be anywhere near "10x" faster. ii) many would see that as a limitation, not a feature. iii) Similarly, many would see that as a limitation not a feature.

But it seems very weird to be comparing this on a feature-by-feature basis with Snapchat anyway. I would think Snapchat already has the network effects to essentially capture the market of "ephemeral photos and videos", and what I'd like to know is, what makes this different? If I already had Snapchat installed on my phone, why would I bother to install this?

i) it is four taps on snapchat, no? just did it again and for me it's 4 vs 1 ii)that is true - i guess if you really want to nail a more personal / 1-1 service you need to have some constraints around broadcasting iii) same - if you want it to be personal and authentic you need constraints around that. but good questions, i think if you just try it - it is easiest to experience the differences

I don't know about you, but I think SnapChat is for children (silly ghost mascot).

TapTalk is ridiculously fast and easy to use. The One-Tap-To-Send functionality makes it operate like a Video Walkie Talkie. You have to experience it to see what I mean.

I love Taptalk and use it around 50 times a day. Super fast and intimate asynchronous communication with close friends.

The non broadcast part of TapTalk feels limiting at first as a sender but it hugely improves the quality of the stuff you receive.

Snapchat from over here looks like an American fad. The news about how broken their approach to privacy is probably didn't help it much either.

Because cloning has worked so well for them in the past few years. How's their Foursquare competitor doing?

Big fan of Taptalk and Onno. It's remarkably fast and the one-to-one emphasizes personal communication.

link to taptalk: www.taptalk.me

ahh thank you. I thought they meant "tapatalk" the popular forum viewing app.

yes that is a frequent mix-up ;)

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