This is another installment in a series of blogs in which a few members of our team combine their social media experience and expertise to assess the latest and best in the social app world. This week we’re looking at emoji-inspired social app, Peach.
New apps burst onto the social scene every day. Most of them arrive and explode in a supernova-like fashion and then burn out before most people even have a chance to download them. The latest to arrive, Peach — created by Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann — very well may meet the same fate by next week. Or it could be the next big thing. We can’t decide, but we did spend the last few days playing around with the app. Here’s what we found:
Peach is the spawn of Twitter and Snapchat
If Snapchat and Twitter had a baby, it would be adorable little Peach. Peach is built with the same simplicity and silliness of Snapchat, but made for the content types found on Twitter. Users can post photos, GIFs, status updates, and random thoughts. Peach even has a few additional features Twitter doesn’t — users can add drawings and answer questions with a prompt from the lightbulb icon.
Peach is silly
The poking trend has been dead for years, but we could quickly get back on board with bothering our friends through other vague gestures like “booping” and “caking.” The pointless, silly functions are one of Peach’s best features. The whole point of the app seems to be having fun and sharing lighthearted content — and we kinda dig that.
Peach has its own lingo
Peach’s other standout feature is its semi-secret code of functions. Using specific trigger words like “shout” or “tv” will make your text large or let you share what you’re watching.
If you’re not interested in hunting down all the code word Easter eggs yourself, Peach offers a handy key on its website.
Peach does not have filters
It would be nice if this app came with a few fun filters for photos, but sadly pictures taken in the app can only be uploaded as they are. Snapchat screenshots it is.
Peach’s news feed is different
Peach does have a news feed — kind of. It’s not a string of the latest updates from friends; it’s a list of your friends in order of who has posted most recently. Green dots appear next to users’ names to indicate that they’ve posted new content you haven’t seen yet. Clicking a friend’s name takes you to his or her personal stream of content, where all of his or her posts can be found. We like this less overwhelming and algorithm-free home screen that lets us keep up with what we’ve missed without all the clutter.
Peach is built for sharing only your stuff
The main thing users can do on Peach is share, but only their own content. Friends can like and comment on posts, but they can’t reshare them or post on others’ timelines. There are also no hashtags to be found in this app to locate new users or trending topics. This app is strictly built for sharing your own content and looking at others’.
Peach’s ‘People You May Know’ is way better
We like Peach’s approach to friend suggestions: just a simple list of friends’ friends. You can view friend lists from personal profiles or see all the friends of friends you haven’t added from your own profile. You’ll never find any faces of strangers in your feed or sidebar. Other social apps can take a lesson from Peach here.
Peach is not on Android
Like every other social app, Peach is more fun with more friends. If users’ friends can’t be on it, Peach will quickly lose any appeal it has — and we think it has plenty. Users looking for simplicity and a break from the serious stories in other news feeds will likely find Peach entertaining and refreshing, at least for a while. Even if it doesn’t stick around, we’re betting other apps will quickly be copying the keyword functions and “booping” buttons soon enough.
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