Introducing Shorts
Today we’re launching a new product called Shorts. It’s the most personal sharing experience our team has ever created.
Shorts lets you learn about people by following their camera rolls. Throughout the day you’ll see photos they’re taking, videos they’re recording, screenshots they’re snapping, and little peeks into their daily lives. You’ll feel like you’re with them, even if you’re far away.
Shorts was designed to make sharing easy, but to give you complete control. Here’s how it works:
Each time you open Shorts, it looks for new photos or videos on your camera roll. If it finds any, it asks you if they’re okay to share. You just say yes or no. There are no filters to choose from or captions to write, so the whole process takes seconds.
When you’re done, you’ll see photos from your friends’ camera rolls.
Because it’s so easy, people share a lot on Shorts — about half of all the photos, videos, and screenshots they take. They also start taking more photos — 2–3x as many as they did before they joined Shorts — and they start sharing more frequently throughout the day. It turns out that when people know their friends will see their photos, they take more of them, so you really get to see what they’re up to.
It’s pretty magical using Shorts with the people closest to you. Suddenly you go from talking with old friends every few months to feeling like you’re continuously with them — going along on their morning runs, seeing them make dinner in the evenings, and watching them hang out with friends on the weekends. You see the little moments that weren’t published elsewhere and the memories they’re capturing, as they capture them.
By default, Shorts also lets you see people in your extended friend group, including friends-of-friends, people you follow on other networks, and — if you enable location — people nearby. This helps you get to know all sorts of people better — from your friends’ roommates and families to interesting people on the other side of the globe.
Our mission with Shorts is to help you feel like you’re with other people and stay connected to them throughout the day. Right now, I’d love to know what it’s like to be with my sister as she plays with her new son in her living room. I’d love to sit next to my good friend on Sunday as he sips a cup of coffee on a park bench in London.
So many of these little moments already live on our phones — and we’re taking more each day — but so few of them ever get shared. If you can unlock just a tiny fraction of them, really special things start to happen.
You can get Shorts in the App Store now and reach us anytime on Twitter, on Instagram, and at tryonshorts.com.
We can’t wait to hear what you think.
