One month after launching its Yo app, which has become the talk of the Internet just by enabling people to send a one-word message, "Yo," Mobli is already working on its next killer application. The company, which operates an app for sharing images and clips in competition with Instagram, today launched its Mirage app aimed at facilitating easy transmission of images and video clips.
The idea behind Mirage is to combine the ease of Yo in transmitting messages with the mysteriousness underlying the success of Snapchat's application, which vanishes after 10 seconds. After hooking up to a Facebook account, the application splits the smart phone screen: the upper part becomes the camera area, and clicking on it makes it possible to switch between a rear view and a front view.
The bottom part of the screen is reserved for the friends to whom the visual messages can be transmitted. A short click on a friend's picture transmits to him a photo of what is on the screen at the time, and a long click transmits a video clip of up to 15 seconds. Double-clicking the upper area of the camera makes it possible to add text to the message. The image or clip can be transmitted using the application, and the person to whom it is sent receives an alert on their phone that a new image has been received in an incoming mailbox within Mirage. The application's big advantage is that images and clips can also be sent to someone who has not downloaded the application. In this case, the person receiving the image or clip gets an SMS message with a viewing link. He has 10 seconds to view the image or clip, after which the visual item vanishes, similar to Snapchat.
The application was slated for an official launch this week, and Mobli's YouTube page even featured pre-launch teasers, but it appears that Mobli CEO Moshe Hogeg couldn't wait, and went ahead on his Facebook page, saying, "I'll be interviewed a lot about this application and the philosophy behind it."
Going beyond the slogans, the Mirage application can certainly make it easier to transmit images and video clips between regular addresses, but it still lacks several possibilities, such as transmission to a number of addresses simultaneously and transmitting an image from the gallery, rather than something snapped that instant. Furthermore, it will apparently be difficult for Mirage to penetrate the popular world of Snapchat, through which over 400 million images are transmitted daily. In addition, Facebook has also entered the image sharing market in a more clandestine way than usual with it Slingshot application, aimed at enabling friends to share images; viewing the image is possible, however, only if the addressee himself sends an image to the addresser. At the same time, websites have in recent days published a screen capture from Facebook's Instagram application showing an invitation to download an application name Bolt. Like Mirage, Bolt facilitates image sharing with a click. On the other hand, the downloading link does not work, and various reports therefore wonder whether this is an unintended leak of a new image sharing app, or an attempt to test a combination of advertising tools for promoting and downloading apps.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 27, 2014
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