Best Way to Have 3 Couples Upload and Share Pictures on One Site

A new social app, Locket, popped to the summit of the App Shop charts in recent days thanks to its clever premise to put live photos from friends in a widget on your iOS homescreen. In other words, it turns Apple's widget organization — typically used to showcase information like news, weather, inspirational quotes or photos from your own iPhone's gallery — into a private social networking platform.

The idea for the app was dreamed up by Matt Moss, a former Apple Worldwide Developer Conference student scholarship winner and contempo UC Santa Barbara grad, who had been building a user research and testing platform called Hawkeye Labs.

Locket, he admits, was originally a personal side projection — not his main focus.

"I built information technology as a nowadays for my girlfriend for her altogether terminal summer," Moss explains. "She was going back to school in the fall, so nosotros were almost to get-go a long-distance relationship," he says. "The process of getting a picayune photo from her on my homescreen…seemed really highly-seasoned. But a nice way to stay in bear upon."

The developer build the app over a week or two and ended up using it with his girlfriend fairly extensively over the by six months, sending each other an average of five photos per 24-hour interval. As Locket also stores the photos sent and received in its history section, the app became a fun way to wait back on their photos, as well.

Soon, the couple's friends started taking notice and asked if they could use it with their own pregnant others, family unit or friends. So Moss decided to brand Locket publicly bachelor to users on the App Store.

The app launched on New year's day'due south Day, and has now seen more 2 one thousand thousand users sign up as of this morning. On Sunday, Locket became the No. 1 app overall on the U.Southward. App Shop, per Apptopia's app shop data, and had become the No. i Social Networking app the day prior. Apptopia reports but seeing around one 1000000 global installs so far, with near 31% from the U.Due south. — but its data is simply through yesterday.

Moss credits Locket's rapid adoption to going viral on TikTok, where he published videos to an accompanying company business relationship for Locket where he could show off the app in action. His video received some 100,000 views over simply a couple of days. Other TikTok users then began making their own content featuring the app and the custom sound used on the original Locket video.

@locketcamera Link in bio #locket #widget #2021 #2022 ♬ original audio – Locket

This helped blow up the app even more among TikTok's young user base. In fact, one video made by a TikTok user in the U.K. topped 5 meg views in a single solar day, Moss noted.

While it's common for app developers to leverage TikTok to drive installs at the time of launch, Moss denies that any sort of paid influencer marketing took identify hither, nor did he run paid advertisements on TikTok or elsewhere, he says.

Today, Locket remains in the No. 1 position on the iPhone'due south Top Free Apps nautical chart as a issue of its TikTok exposure — and considering its early on adopters invited their friends to download the app and check it out, driving further installs.

To go started using the app, download Locket from the App Shop and sign up by verifying your phone number.

Locket then requests access to your iPhone's Contacts and Camera in order to role. Ideally, Locket would let users to featherbed full address volume access to instead permit users to invite friends through standalone invitations, as that would be a more privacy-focused approach. Moss tells u.s. he's considering irresolute this attribute of the app'southward behavior, which is meant to make the app easier to use. However, he says Locket doesn't store your contact info nor transport its invites automatically using its own phone number — it just pops up the iMessage window so you lot tin can customize the text sent to your friends.

However, if yous cull to decline Apple's pop-upwards, which requests permission to pull in your Contacts, you aren't able to employ the app at all, nosotros constitute.

After inviting and calculation friends to bring together yous on Locket, y'all'll then add the app's widget to your iOS home screen. The widget will showcase your friends' photos as they add together images throughout the twenty-four hour period. You can also launch the app at whatever time to add photos of your own to be sent to your friends' widgets.

Image Credits: Locket

There isn't much more than to the app than that, really. At that place are no fancy photographic camera filters or effects, nor can you upload images from your Camera Ringlet. The feel is designed to exist a way to share photos in real time with a pocket-sized group of up to five friends or loved ones.

Locket's quick shot to the height of the App Store has Moss at present thinking of his side by side steps. He plans to later introduce a subscription model and support for boosted widgets and, at some point, an Android version. As to whether or not he'll take on outside investment, all the same, remains to exist seen.

"We're definitely thinking about stuff," he says. "We'll see."

But the creator believes at that place's potential in Locket across its current photo widget experience — peradventure even growing out a set of features inside the app as users share more photos over time.

"I think at that place is something pretty meaningful to be built in the close friends and family space," Moss says. "I do think people — especially younger people — are a footling scrap more than tired of apps that are kind of very advertizement-centric and very metric-axial."

"You terminate up with these huge social circles on the app — where you have 1,000 friends on Instagram, or you have to send Snapchats back and along with your 100 closest friends — which really takes a lot of effort at the end of the twenty-four hours," he continues. "Then the idea of making something that's more geared towards those 5 closest people, or those 10 closest people, and and so providing a way to make your phone feel more personal and geared towards people instead of these apps — I retrieve there'due south a real appetite for that," Moss adds.

Locket isn't the commencement to offer a collaborative photograph widget experience. Another app called Magnets, launched in 2020, had a similar idea only also supported sending curt text messages to friends through its widget. Other apps competing in this space include Ekko, Widgetgram, Lettie, Tile Widget, Fave and others. However, none have yet to achieve any sort of critical mass.

Locket is currently a free download on iOS but has just achieved a 3.4-star rating, every bit some users didn't seem to understand how to make the widget work, or were struggling with the onboarding process. The latter seemed to largely occur during the top of its viral surge when the app was experiencing some issues, only we've since tested Locket and institute the issues to be resolved.

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Source: https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/11/locket-an-app-for-sharing-photos-to-friends-homescreens-hits-the-top-of-the-app-store/

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