DingDong! Here’s The New Craze In Photo Messaging Apps And It’s Addictive

Lately I’ve been playing with a great little app called Povio. Not unlike Snapchat, you snap a picture and send to one or more people and the app prompts them to send one back, though the photo doesn’t disappear. It’s a little like photo messaging “with a nudge.” However, another player has been coming up with its own take on this idea, and today we can exclusively give some of you lucky people access to the DingDong app, which is one of the most viral we’ve seen lately.

The idea is to make staying in touch with friends super simple and expressive. Snap a picture with a simple doorbell-like button, it “DingDongs” the person, then they can add an emoticon or send a DingDong picture back. The interaction goes onto a map with a thin line between your two locations. It’s a fairly emotional experience in many ways.

There’s no text field or traditional photo-sharing mechanism, so everything has to happen inside the app — no feedback from people on Twitter for instance. That will clearly draw people in.

DingDong is entirely private: You can’t follow or be followed, it’s not a broadcast and not a public check-in. Each time you decide who sees your picture and location; it works exactly like SMS in terms of privacy.

The app addresses a few major trends. Firstly, people are increasingly tired of sharing personal content publicly – hence why, to some extent, Path has garnered a corner of the private sharing market. Secondly, it is super simple like many of these new photo apps. Thirdly, I could see the DingDong app working well on a wearable device like a smartwatch.

I can see it offering a few business models, such as in-app purchases of emoticons, sounds or other virtual goods. And perhaps interaction with brands.

Based in Berlin at the soon-to-be-opened Factory campus, the company is launching an iOS beta initially but an Android version is already in beta; also a Pebble watch prototype of the app is expected to be available during the summer.

Here are some codes we managed to get so you can try out the app, after downloading it here:

6dha3i kmeem9 cz7c8b oqw8qy qhjw76
lzss5o s1syqz ufcxcx c943ih 3i6wui
dz5a15 m35uq5 svvwyw hsieoe jkh3ou
olryum ciq9m1 jrohct 84tzl5 hocxn6
tbi3c1 kgni1i dtpl0k lu36ef lhke4h
w3bsq4 7clgmq 2pexk0 b7tbt9 cjin2n
m6erec jog0un nqbttn prqvlc pfdupz
onlrum yylvmv cavvwe wyubs6 7lbuwe
cwmprk 3e75kn dxxucf 9excf5 c7lheh
1yau5c tvoi5a xuywa1 oa6isu 0xrrb0
nouss8 pmvg3g xpqtwl 96cp6j evw4eg
lslr4q 8kgqmm wk95bw xnjmx1 rhxsos
xps9oc sicfr1 fhnzia 3ksb2b 2c5bxh
wtbsxt py6ah4 ynvgnq zh84jk ttjbjn
fmny4g zuvlrz valrgv rxnjgf 8nx00u
ytt443 cbf8t9 fj5l3q wmeut2 d96oom
y4b6os wfideg 7f9rel 8enyxw j4bhxr
5bq7my w3pqvp 2ugwjq gxcmul 0fmciz
vxkfab rlly6e bxmjmf j9ajtb dw0sj1
ohfbww go4ulo 3kq2qk vmbfu3 1w4lea