The origin of Wallcat, and the introduction of Wallcat Partners

A while back, someone told me the origin of the Google self-driving car. Employees at Google were tasked to brainstorm ways to serve more ads. They realized people spend a lot of time in cars, and aside from the shotgun approach of taxicab ads, the radio, and billboards, there’s no way to directly serve a targeted ad to passengers. So they decided to build a car, where they would have complete control of the environment, and have new surfaces to serve ads.

I doubt the story is true, as Google would have many obvious and more leveraging reasons to get into self-driving cars, but I found the idea of creating an entire car as the output of a brainstorm with a simple goal, inspiring.

Shortly after hearing the story, I decided to look for new surfaces to use for branding and marketing. As I was looking around, I caught myself staring at the generic wallpaper on my Apple laptop, and realized many other folks are probably staring at the same now-boring image. I decided to build a very simple mac app allowing me to update the desktop wallpaper of my friends’ computers.

Today, Wallcat has thousands of daily users on both macOS and as a Google Chrome extension. There’s also an iOS app coming shortly allowing people to set your images as the wallpaper on their phones. Initially I was building the product during late nights and between client work. Over the last month and a bit, I’ve rebuilt the backend (👋 Parse), the apps, and created system where I could login and upload and schedule the images in advance. Today, I’ve opened that system up to the public.

You can now create and curate a channel of images that will automatically be set as people’s wallpapers. Perhaps you’re a photography magazine, an agency, or a company that has a lot of beautiful images of your product (like Airbnb, Breather, or Nike), a sports team, or just an individual with a keen eye for great images. Wallcat offers you a new surface to reach potential customers. Each image can be hyperlinked to a location you choose.

If you’re looking for a new and unique way of reaching customers and getting your company in front of new folks, I’d love to hear from you: https://beta.wall.cat/partners

You’re welcome to download Wallcat on the macOS App Store here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wallcat/id1000397973?mt=12