Oh Western culture, when will you cease to amaze me! First the fact that you can buy a Julian Assange as Che Guevara shirt in the WikiLeaks “mall” and now this …
“Punch Your Friends” is an iPhone app created on a lark by Blippy co-founder Philip Kaplan, while he was on vacation in Hawaii. When I asked him for more information about the app he responded, “Flattered but it’s not really TechCrunch worthy yet. Frankly the app isn’t that great.”
But, mainly because of Sturgeon’s Law, I’m writing about it anyways.
“Punch Your Friends” lets you take/upload pictures of your friends, enemies or boss and then touch punch them, giving the illusion of bruising. The more you touch punch the more the pictures bruise and yes Kaplan is right, after the initial novelty of getting to see what your friends look like all beat up, the app is kind of crappy. And while the smacking noises are indeed awesome I find the bruises pretty unrealistic (see above).
Said Kaplan, “Think of it like a 99-cent app that I’m preemptively giving full refunds for because it sucks.”
Inexplicably, the app is currently clocking in 1,200 installs per day and is at #307 in downloads for free apps in the US. It is also featured in the App Store in France. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
You can download the app here.
Take pictures of your friends and then “virtually” punch them by tapping the screen. Fun sounds and bruising effects. Email the final, altered photo to share it with your friends.
Philip Kaplan (@pud) is a programmer and entrepreneur in San Francisco, CA. He is the founder of Fandalism (social network for musicians), TinyLetter (email service provider, acquired by MailChimp), Blippy (venture-backed social commerce company), and AdBrite (a large Internet ad network). He also developed several iPhone apps, including the best selling “Punch Your Friends.” In 2010, Philip was entrepreneur-in-residence at Charles River Ventures. Philip founded and sold several other businesses including F-ckedcompany.com and PK Interactive,...
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