flâneur

An app can be a home-cooked meal

robinsloan.com · 1,565 words · saved by 1 readers

It launched in the first week of January 2020, and almost immediately, it was down­loaded by four people in three different time zones. In the years since, it has remained steady at four daily active users, with zero churn: a resounding success, exceeding every one of its creator’s expectations. 🙂 I made a messaging app for, and with, my family. It is ruth­lessly simple; we love it; no one else will ever use it. I wanted to share a few notes about how and why I made it, both to (a) offer a nudge to anyone else consid­ering a similar project, and (b) suggest something a little larger about software. My story begins with another app, now defunct, called Tapstack. Opening the app, you saw a live feed from your phone’s camera. Below, a grid of faces, some of them representing individuals, others repre­senting groups. My grid had four cells: my mom, my dad, my sister, and a group collecting all three. Just like Snapchat or Instagram, you tapped to capture a photo, pressed to record a video

An app can be a home-cooked meal From: Robin Sloan To: the lab Sent: February 2020 An app can be a home-cooked meal Have you heard about this new app called Boop­Snoop? It launched in the first week of Jan­uary 2020, and almost immediately, it was down­loaded by four people in three dif­ferent time zones. In the years since, it has remained steady at four daily active users, with zero churn: a resounding success, exceeding every one of its creator’s expectations. 🙂 I made a mes­saging app for, and with, my family. It is ruth­lessly simple; we love it; no one else will

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