Less than three Weeks ago, the French startup released Amo ID. As I noted in my article covering this long-awaited launch, ID was Amo’s first idea. Today, the social consumer startup launches its second eponymous app Yasser.
Once again, this new app will be dissected by social app fans and other companies working in this space because Amo was co-founded by 10 industry veterans who created Zenly, the location sharing app acquired by Snap, and has grown into one of the largest social apps in Europe. With 18 million daily active users then it was shut down by Snap.
Amo’s first app ID is all about creating (and browsing) highly personalized profile pages. It’s a social media visual experience that has a sense of depth and space and doesn’t limit you to a grid of 3×3 images. Capturing is a completely different thing.
“This is something I’ve been thinking about obsessively for the past 12 years of my life. They’re all making photo apps and I use other photo apps every day. Why can’t I make one myself? How am I going to do it? Amo co-founder Antoine Martin told me a few days ago. Weeks.
“This is something I’ve been thinking about obsessively for the past 12 years of my life. They all make photo apps and I use other photo apps every day. Why can’t I make one myself?” Antoine Martin
Capture is a completely different photo sharing app. As the name suggests, calling it a photo-sharing app is unfair, as Amo spent more time thinking about taking photos than looking at other people’s photos. It’s a fun, straightforward smartphone camera experience that takes advantage of the many sensors on your phone.
When you open the app, Capture immediately starts using your camera’s viewfinder. There’s a big shutter button in the middle, and some small icons next to it.
Capture is a camera app, and it’s a social app. It is meant to be used as a way to take photos in just a few seconds, without having to think about it, just as you take photos using the iPhone’s default camera app.
When you take a photo, nothing happens. There’s no preview screen, no action buttons, nothing.
“Consumption takes a back seat, and it doesn’t land in the bottom line. It’s applying creativity first, and that’s what it’s really about,” Martin said. “If I’m walking down the street and I see… Space invaders Which I like, I just pick it up, be there, take a picture, turn off my phone, and it’s in my pocket. I don’t spend minutes looking at the preview.”
In the background, the photos you take with Capture are saved to your photo library and shared with your friends in Amo. There is no need to think about what you should share or not and who you should share your photos with. Every photo you take with Capture is shared.
Personal camera
A piece of content in Capture isn’t just an image. By default, when you tap the large shutter button, Capture saves two images – what you see in the viewfinder and a wide-angle image.
There are smaller buttons in the app that are basically other photo modes. Smiley lets you take a front-facing photo, what you see and a selfie. The third button is the super zoom mode which takes a group of images that are increasingly zoomed in.
These features allow you to augment your photos with context. They can also be viewed as artistic tools or opportunities for fun.
But when you look at your friends’ photos, you only see one photo, and that’s it. This time, Capture takes advantage of the accelerometer to turn a still image into a moving image. You can tilt your phone back and forth to reveal a wide-angle shot, selfie, or zoomed-in photos.
Just like with ID, Amo has integrated a lot of haptic effects so you can actually feel the app as it vibrates slightly in your hand when you tilt your phone back and forth. It’s a fantastic interactive gesture and it works very well.
One thing I’ve noticed when people start talking about Capture is that they say “grab my phone” because it’s easier to explain the app once the other person can move the device in their hand.
Here’s a video explaining what I mean (haptic feedback not included):
Now what about filters? These things are common in other social apps, right? Amo does let you customize your camera, but the company doesn’t call them filters.
When you swipe left on the home screen, you get many options. There is a menu that lets you customize the color temperature and overall look of your photos. You select a color, and click a combination of buttons until you are satisfied with the result. Amo does not label these buttons or provide any explanation. It’s all about finding your style without any influence.
“There’s a button to draw and a button to drop stickers. The goal here is for you to be able to create your own signature,” Martin said. Once you hit the save button, all your future photos will be captured with these customizations. “We’ve tried to be more personal than others, and allow You define your own style and keep it that way.”
And the capture has more depth than you might think. There are some hidden tricks that users will discover over time. For example, you can switch to a different theme by placing your palm in front of the selfie camera for a few seconds.
This way, you can save multiple camera patterns without erasing the previous one. You can also move the app buttons in case you want to place them in the corner or if you want to make the front-back button bigger.
Social camera roll
At the bottom of the app there is a banner that tells you if your friends have shared new photos. When you tap it, it opens a feed of your most recent photos. You can add comments and view where the photo was taken.
Scrolling through these photos feels like you’re browsing a shared camera roll with your friends. This is arguably something that messaging apps like WhatsApp have been successful at in group chats. But the content in Capture is less polished and more mundane. It reflects what your friends actually do every day.
So there you have it, Amo is a startup that is building a wide range of social apps. ID and Capture are the first two applications. There may be more applications in the future.
It can be a powerful tactic when it comes to user growth. When you create a profile and add friends in one app, you’ll find your friends in other Amo apps. You can see notifications from the ID in Capture, and vice versa.
It is a new approach in the field of social consumer. Amo isn’t just trying different things, it’s also building radically different social apps, tying them together with a unified experience and putting them on your phone’s home screen — one icon at a time.
Another common denominator is that Amu wants to focus on friends and loved ones in real life. This is also the case with Capture.
“When users switch into consumption mode, they have a timer of content they can consume. “They know it takes three to four seconds max for each piece of content,” Martin said. “So users don’t get caught up in an endless TikTok feed, where you risk becoming immersed.” In 3 hours worth of stuff.”
When you discard the last photo, the app closes itself. This means it’s time to get back to real life and explore and take interesting photos for your friends.