Need another chat app? The creators of Peach App think so

So even with the plethora of chat apps out there, the creators of Peach App have decided that we need another one. The reason it’s gaining a lot of traction is because it comes from the co founder of Vine – Twitter’s 6 second looping video app and because it’s ‘fun’.

It has been described as a mash up of Twitter and the business world darling chat app Slack – there doesn’t seem to be much point to it, but as above it’s fun. It distinguishes itself from the rest with what it calls ‘magic words’ – which are basically short cuts for some cool little pieces of functionality. Type ‘H’ (here) for example and it will post your current location. Type Gif + keyword and it will find and post appropriate Gifs. Or just type ‘g’ and it will bring up the entire library of gifs. Type ‘Sa’ and it will automatically open Safari (it’s only iOS available at the moment) making it easy to find, cut and paste hyperlinks into your Peach feed.

Something else that does stand it apart in the crowd of chat apps is the decision to move in the complete opposite direction of the ‘open web’ and actually put all that functionality and content sharing inside it’s own walls. Peach is very much a proprietary app that allows you to only communicate with people within your Peach contacts. You are not broadcasting to your entire contact base, like in Facebook, you can pick and choose who the content is going to and who it is visible to. There is no web based app, there is no URL to link to your Peach feed, which offers at least some semblance of privacy. This doesn’t mean you can turn off your brain and not think about what you are posting because people can still see the feed in some cases, if they are searching for you. Unlike snapchat where the snap (unless it’s a story) is only visible to the recipient for however long you’ve made it available.

It will be interesting to see where this goes, if it indeed goes anywhere. It’s entering a saturated market and whilst it’s fun. Does it have longevity? We will have to see if people choose to switch indefinitely, or have it as a temporary install and then head back to Whatsapp! After all, if your friends decide not to use it, it’s pretty much useless to you, even if you REALLY want to use it.