In 2018, I wrote a TechCrunch article stating that 2018 was “the year social networks were no longer social.” Reflecting on that article, I’m undecided that 2018 was the turning level. However the premise of the article nonetheless holds up nicely.
In some unspecified time in the future, social networks had been not about connecting together with your closest buddies, maintaining with long-distance relations and feeling a particular reference to individuals you like.
TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Fb, YouTube and X (previously Twitter) are all slowly evolving to change into the identical infinite scrollable feed of algorithm-optimized brief movies from high performers.
And it seems that I’m not the one one who has seen that social networks have been slowly drifting away from their unique goal. Amo, a small crew primarily based in Paris, has been working for the higher a part of 2023 on a model new social app known as ID.
ID is a social app launching at present on iOS that permits you to join with your folks in a artistic manner. In some ways, it feels just like the early days of blogs, MySpace’s highly-personalized profile pages and the golden period of Tumblr.
However first, some context about Amo. There’s a whole lot of hype and anticipation surrounding Amo’s launch as the corporate has been co-founded by Antoine Martin, who was the co-founder of Zenly with Alexis Bonillo. Zenly was a well-liked social app targeted on location sharing that inspired you to spend extra time with your folks and uncover new locations.
Snap spent more than $200 million to acquire Zenly and saved the identical crew to iterate on it, as a separate app. Below Snap’s possession, Zenly turned one in all Europe’s greatest social apps of all time. At its peak the corporate had 18 million completely different customers opening the app every single day.
After which… it disappeared.
As a part of Snap’s cost-cutting efforts, the corporate determined to shut down Zenly altogether. From what I’ve heard, this transfer even triggered discussions between French politicians on the highest degree and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel.
Many key members of the Zenly crew at the moment are working at Amo. The truth is, there are 10 co-founders. Along with Martin, Corentin Kerisit, Michael Goldenstein, Claire Pluvinage, Charly Delaroche, Julien Martin, Quentin Perez, Nicolas Fallourd, Alexis Druon and Jean-Baptiste Dalido are all Amo co-founders and all former Zenly individuals.
The second motive why Amo’s launch is extremely anticipated is that the startup closed an $18 million funding spherical in February or March at a valuation round $100 million with New Wave main the spherical, and Coatue and DST Global additionally collaborating. There are additionally 80 angel traders on Amo’s cap desk.
It is a extremely uncommon funding spherical because it occurred in 2023 (throughout a VC funding downturn), Amo is a cellular shopper startup (no income for now) and the startup didn’t have any product on the market.
An empty canvas
In 2010, Jürgen Schweizer from Cultured Code, the corporate behind private activity administration app Issues, wrote a blog post shortly after Steve Jobs launched the unique iPad. In that put up, he in contrast the iPad to an empty canvas.
“If you want to understand what makes the iPad special, you cannot look at what it has, but what it doesn’t have. The iPad is so thin and light, it becomes the display, and the display becomes the application. No input devices. The device vanishes and turns into the application you are using. The technology is transparent,” Schweizer wrote.
And this analogy applies significantly nicely to ID and Amo’s work as nicely. There are numerous issues that you are able to do with ID. There are additionally many issues that we take as a right in a social app that merely aren’t there.
ID is an empty canvas paired with artistic instruments that make it easier to specific your self. You should utilize it to create a profile that completely describes your pursuits in a visible method. However there’s a social twist as you’ll be able to each see your folks’ profiles and add issues to their very own profiles.
Picture Credit: Romain Dillet
While you first create your profile on ID, you get an empty whiteboard that’s ready for content material. You may fill it your self in 4 other ways.
You may add stickers out of your sticker library (extra on that later), you’ll be able to seize content material out of your photograph library, you’ll be able to write textual content or you’ll be able to draw. While you select a photograph, ID routinely creates a cut-out of the primary object or topic within the photograph utilizing PhotoRoom’s technology.
This may really feel instantly acquainted to Pinterest customers who like to construct temper boards or software program builders who cowl their model new laptop computer lid with stickers.
Each digital object could be moved, resized and rotated. After some time, your profile turns into this kind of spatial canvas. You can also make issues so small that they kind of disappear… until you zoom in.
You may create small islands that outline what’s in your thoughts proper now. As an illustration, you’ll be able to have a Los Angeles nook with the favourite buildings you noticed throughout your trip, group pictures with your folks, the cup of your favourite espresso store there, and so forth. You too can have a restaurant nook with pictures of meals from fancy eating places the place you’ve just lately been.
The whole lot feels clean and pure. You scroll, zoom in, zoom out, soar from one profile to the opposite. There’s a way of depth and area that I’ve by no means seen in every other app. Pictures by no means really feel pixelated and also you don’t really feel such as you’re ready for one thing to load.
When you’ve been utilizing ID for some time, issues can change into messy — however so is life. “And it’s fine. My personality is chaotic — our personalities are chaotic. They’re multifaceted and they’re not neatly arranged in a 3×3 grid,” Amo CEO Antoine Martin stated.
Emergent gameplay
As you begin shopping across the app and what’s new in your buddies’ profile web page, chances are you’ll need to steal one thing on your personal wall. ID helps you to add content material from different profiles to your sticker library so as to both add it to your individual profile or put it on another person’s profile.
I’ve been utilizing the app for a bit bit greater than per week, and I can already see some tendencies spreading across the small neighborhood of beta customers. You may see who initially created a sticker because it strikes round from one wall to a different. Some customers have put good cabinets to allow them to neatly categorize every part that issues to them. A person created a guestbook part on her profile. “If you’re dropping by, please leave a note here,” she wrote.
Just a few video video games rely closely on the participant’s creativity to have enjoyable, akin to Minecraft or current Zelda video games. In these video games, you’ll be able to create your individual fortress or construct your individual automobile.
And that’s additionally the primary idea behind ID. Amo offers you the artistic instruments and a limitless Figma-like canvas. Now, it’s as much as the neighborhood to determine what they need to do with it. And the perfect half is that it doesn’t seem like every other social app on the market.
Picture Credit: Romain Dillet
Possibly Amo will find yourself fostering a creator financial system with unique content material that may actually make your profile stand out. Possibly the corporate will add some premium options over time. For now, Amo needs to discover a hit.
“We’re prioritizing scale because my goal is to create an indestructible company. And it’s Zenly’s founder who is saying that! I used to think that 18 million [daily active users] would be enough to make a company indestructible. But I was wrong. I think you need 100 million [daily active users],” Martin instructed me.
Curing loneliness
When the Amo crew began engaged on ID, they wished to discover a technique to treatment loneliness. It appears a bit counterintuitive to construct a social app as individuals spend a lot time on their telephone already. However, in line with Antoine Martin, it’s simply that current social apps don’t have your greatest pursuits in thoughts.
“The [World Health Organization] now calls it the loneliness epidemic. And if they say that it’s an epidemic, it’s because it’s actually infectious. In other words, if you’re isolated, your loved ones are too because you’re unreachable. So during the two hours you’re on TikTok, they have no one to talk to,” Martin instructed me.
“And at the same time, the human needs that the social consumer space can fulfill are no longer covered by these products, whereas they used to be,” he added. “In the early days of Facebook, I don’t know if you remember, profiles were sort of a mash-up. There were drawings, games, photos, text. You’d write long comments, it could be a poem . . . And on the other hand, it was a reminder that you mattered to these people.”
In line with him, the present technology of social networks are very passive. You don’t need to do a lot to spend two hours on TikTok or YouTube as a result of these corporations need you to spend as a lot time as potential in these apps. “We aspire to go back to these earlier precepts and make them work,” Martin stated.
That’s additionally the rationale why Amo doesn’t need you to spend hours within the app. When you may have a couple of minutes, you’ll be able to open the app to verify what’s new in your buddies’ profiles by swiping up on the notification playing cards.
While you’ve reached the final card, ID reveals you a message that claims “get some fresh air.” After which, the app closes itself. You’re again on the house display, you’ll be able to put your telephone again in your pocket.
Picture Credit: Romain Dillet
Amo & ID
ID is an opinionated tackle social apps, however is it going to work? Given the previous expertise of the crew and Amo’s deep pockets, if there’s one crew that has a shot at attempting one thing radically new within the area, it’s Amo.
“We’re deliberately shipping something 8 or 9 months after the launch of the company because we swore to ourselves that it wouldn’t take us a year to get started, that we’d learn more by building in public,” Martin stated.
Whereas ID is Amo’s first concept, the corporate more than likely has different concepts within the shopper social area — Amo didn’t title its app ‘Amo’ in spite of everything. So it’s going to be fascinating to comply with the launch of this new app, but in addition Amo’s story as an organization.
Picture Credit: Amo
