The rise of messaging apps has seemingly done two things to many would-be app developers. First: it’s made an unholy number of them build messaging apps becauseMESSAGING IS THE NEXT BIG THING. Second: it has spawned all manner of gimmicky takes on WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc. each of which purports to “offer something different.”
In probably 95 percent of cases, the apps that have been created have absolutely no tangible benefit to the world or anyone. I’m not being a hater but, as TechCrunch’s unofficial messaging app reporter, I’m in a position to have an informed opinion.
So, with those caveats now clearly stated, I actually found a new messaging app that I liked. Who’d have thunk it?
Quickie is the name, and it’s an app for iOS and Android that lets you send ephemeral — aka self-destructing — photos, video, drawings or text.
The reason I’ve enjoyed it this past week is because it is so simple and frivolous.
It’s easy to open and quickly send a pic — front or back camera — write a message, doodle a drawing, or shoot a quick video and send to a friend. Once the other person has seen your message, it is gone. Gone forever.
And that’s basically the app in a nutshell.
Screenshots of ephemeral apps are harder to take than I first thought
I spend most of my day inside messaging apps. There’s Slack for work, and any combination of Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Line, WeChat and others for personal… and sometimes also inevitably work too. These messaging apps have scaled to hundreds of millions of users, and, in doing so, in many ways they replaced email for certain communication. That, in itself, makes them a little more serious than perhaps they were in the past.
That’s probably why I appreciate a lightweight and simple app that is strictly for fun. The drawing section was also a smash with my kids (aged four and six), although there are plenty of apps that they can doodle with and keep their creations too.
If you find Snapchat unintuitive — what’s with the confusing interface, anyway? — then Quickie might resonate with you. But, then again, opinions are subjective and these apps only work if you have a few friends who use them with you.
