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Comment by dcpdx | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I understand the allure of this; perhaps I'm missing something. So I have to send a video/photo in response to someone who sent me one, in order to see what they sent? It seems like there would be a massive disparity in interesting activities between two parties at any given time to make this concept work. If one of my buddies is having a riot at Coachella and sends me a crazy festival pic for instance, and I'm just sitting at my desk doing work, what am I supposed to do? Send them back a pic of my coffee mug or something? Seems like they felt they had to do something to distinguish themselves from Snapchat but I'm not sure this is the answer. Time till tell though, I guess.

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There's a huge untapped market for sharing passive-aggressiveness on social media.

My first thought was: "this is for sexting".

The reason why the tag line is not "You show me yours I show you mine" escapes me.

Well for one, you wouldn't know what his pic was. And two, that's going to be very very normal in this app.

I like it because it's a pic conversation app (which i enjoy, with close friends) that forces interaction. For those of us already using similar things, this sort of structures our interaction into a conversation, rather than one person simply sending pics to the other.

With that said, i can't help but feel i am the minority of users. Not just here on HN (lets be honest, most things are received poorly on HN), but all around. People have the sense of needing to send something meaningful in a picture, but i like simply idle chat, in picture form. It's neat

Why the hell would sending dud pictures to see a picture someone sent you be "normal" for the app? Couldn't we use Facebook, Snapchat, or SMS to get the same effect without literally working around a feature? Fucking retarded.

Why would you want to use an app that "forces" interaction? Either the two mutual parties are interested in talking to each other, or they are not. Im sorry, but a photo sharing app like this one will not help my conversations be more engaging. It actually puts up barriers.

"Neat" does not justify the money or engineering talent invested in it. If I was a Facebook share holder, I'd be confused as all hell.

I'd say Snapchat is the comparison, and yes, you literally could. It's almost as if people and companies create products to compete with other products. Multiple types of bread, what madness is this. I could literally use the same type of bread from this other company!

> "Neat" does not justify the money or engineering talent invested in it. If I was a Facebook share holder, I'd be confused as all hell.

lol i wasn't trying to justify them creating it. I don't give a shit why they did. All i care is that i am a consumer of it, and enjoy it more than Snapchat. Vastly more than sending pictures via SMS/Facebook/etc.

I'd love to continue a discussion, but this feels much less like a discussion about a product and more like i have to try and sell you on the concept, and on the product itself. Frankly, i don't have the slightest care if you like the product.

Funny how Liking something on HN is so often a mind blowingly crazy concept. "But the numbers don't add up!!" they cry. Well, make your own Facebook, become far more successful than FB, and don't make their mistakes. Since you so clearly know something they don't, you should have a serious edge in the competition, right? :)

So I won't knock on you enjoying it, because thats subjective. How do you use it though, you'll need to eventually sell all your facebook friends to use it as well since you like it so much. You'll have to convince them why forcing to send you a picture to see what you send them is better for them.

For this reason, I see it literally as an uphill battle for it to gain traction. Hoping that you are right, and that Facebook as learned something from their mistakes and will take their edge and use it - instead of building a completely separate app with a disjointed use case and calling it social innovation. Give me a break!

> How do you use it though, you'll need to eventually sell all your facebook friends to use it as well since you like it so much. You'll have to convince them why forcing to send you a picture to see what you send them is better for them.

I disagree on me personally, but that is because i try to keep my social circle, especially those who i'd use this app with, very small. I try to keep my FB friends below 10 (though, i have been debating letting everyone in, but only listening/posting to ~10).

This is abnormal for the common person today.

Fwiw, the only problem i have with this App, is that it destroys natural image conversation. Now that we've (friend s and i) used it heavily for a day (we'll see if i think the same after a week), we still enjoy it but we cannot converse beyond 1 reaction. This feels quite limited, and makes the "idle-chat" style picture convo less supported.

It sounds like "fun" to me. I think that's something that Snapchat was able to capture very well, and it looks like Slingshot is looking to actually improve on. It's just plain fun to see what your friends are all up to, at least to me. It leads to discussions and other communication (texting "Wish we had some coffee here, it would probably mellow out this Coachella riot" for instance).

As was mentioned earlier, it's a "show yours and I'll show you mine" kind of thing, but not in the stereotypical sexual sense. It feels like it has the potential to foster community, admittedly in a somewhat odd way, by coercing people to share experiences.

I do worry about the dilution of content through the "Send to all" feature, but I think that requiring someone to send something back directly to you alleviates that quite a bit.

> Send them back a pic of my coffee mug or something?

I love getting job pictures on Snapchat so I'm not so sure it will always be a case where something is more interesting than the other.

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