MyTape Is A Video-Sharing App To Capture And See The World Around You

Meet MyTape, a brand new social app for iOS centered around video. On MyTape, you follow people, shoot videos and watch stuff around you. It’s a sort of mash-up between Periscope, Frontback and Snapchat stories, and it will be interesting to see whether this new social app can find its audience.

Many design elements are reminiscent of other social apps. When you open the app, you are directly in the shooting screen, ready to share a video. Like on Snapchat, Taptalk and, yes, the default camera app, the emphasis is on letting you share stuff as quickly as possible. You can activate the flash or switch the camera, but that’s about it.

Interestingly, you have to keep your finger on the shutter button, emphasizing that you’re not here to shoot long videos. Your video should be at least 2 seconds and less than 20 seconds, and in portrait mode. When you release your finger, you can add your location and a tag. Then all you have to do is hit share.

Putting the shooting screen front and center has another advantage. If you want to shoot a quick video and keep it for later, most of the time you will launch the default camera app. But MyTape probably wants you to think that you could also do it in its app. Shooting a MyTape could become a habit.

To navigate between screens, you can swipe left, right or down. It’s the exact same gestures as on Snapchat. On the left, you will find your notifications, on the right video feeds, and at the top your profile and settings. Interestingly, there is also a search screen so that you can search for videos by tag. If MyTape becomes popular enough, people will start tagging their videos with event tags to create vertical feeds.

myTape

Now, let’s move to the feed. By default, when you open the feed, you are presented with staff picks. A video auto-starts playing, filling up the entire screen of your iPhone. Many social apps started filling up your screen with content after Frontback’s launch, such as music video sharing app Mindie or fashion discovery app Flink.

In all these apps, if you want to go to the next photo or video, you swipe up, creating an addictive experience as you want to see what’s next — swipe, swipe, swipe. And it’s true that MyTape provides an immersive experience that works particularly well for videos. You can favorite, comment or share the video. There are also two other feeds. The first one lets you see videos from people you follow, and the other one lets you see videos from people around your location.

MyTape is also reminiscent of Periscope and Meerkat as your followers will receive a notification whenever you are shooting a video, meaning that they can comment on your video in real time. As videos are limited to 20 seconds, I’m not sure many people will use it this way. It seems like a growth strategy more than anything else.

The big question is whether something like MyTape can succeed. It’s sleek, well-designed and brand new. But it also competes with Snapchat stories in some way. MyTape is also slightly different as it wants to create a global community of video enthusiasts. Yet, Frontback recently shut down even though there was a small dedicated global community of Frontbackers.

At the same time, it seems like it’s game over for public photo-sharing apps. Instagram keeps growing like crazy, and every tech giant lets you share photos in some way. Video sharing is another beast; nobody has cracked the code. And it’s very hard to predict the success of a social app like MyTape. Let’s see how it goes!