The new calendar app that could change the way you think about social
On March 21, Apple announced that there are now more than 1 million apps in the App Store designed for the iPad. That’s just another reminder of how tough it is to stand out in today’s competitive mobile app landscape. What’s needed is a completely new way to own the mobile experience — and that’s what Teplr, a Boston-area startup still in stealth mode, hopes to accomplish.
Your social news feed is so 2015. What Teplr promises for 2016 is a way to use events, not status updates, as the primary way that mobile users interact with their social networks. Teplr, which launched in December 2015 as “the world’s social calendar,” wants to make it possible for app users to showcase their events and activities to friends, and to make it possible for those friends to take part in events even if they can’t attend in person.
Instead of scrolling through reverse chronological news feeds to see what’s going on within their social networks, Teplr users will be able to tune into specific moments. Everything that’s happening around that moment is collected in one spot — including the ability to instant message other users in real-time, view photos or videos and discover other users also attending the event.
What makes the app really exciting for users is the ability to play back past events, giving users a chance to re-live memories after they occur. The two co-founders of Teplr, Gilbert Appiah and Michael Osei, refer to this as being able to “visualize your memories.” That’s something that you can’t easily do with Facebook, which, let’s face it, is primarily the way we think about social in 2016.
A few immediate use cases for Teplr stand out. For example, artists or musicians would be able to tell others about future events where they are appearing or performing. Can’t make the gallery show or live music gig? You can visualize the memories, by seeing images or videos from the event.
The same thing is true for just about any social event on your calendar. A group of friends attending an NCAA basketball game, for example, would be able to interact with other friends who are watching the game at home. A group of students would be able to collaborate around specific classes. The list goes on.
The app is still in beta testing, and the Teplr team is still working on fine-tuning the app’s functionality before a wider release. To truly become the world’s social calendar, Teplr wants to be able to deliver on all the functionality that users demand for events. For now, Teplr is working on delivering a cleaner, more convenient and more engaging experience than currently possible using the Facebook mobile app. Join Beta Testing
There have already been a few hot new investing concepts in 2016 — among them Chris Messina’s concept of “conversational commerce” — and it’s easy to see how Teplr could be part of this growing trend of using the mobile context to change the way you think about social communication. [Link to Medium story: https://medium.com/chris-messina/2016-will-be-the-year-of-conversational-commerce-1586e85e3991#.t1oje176i]
If Teplr is able to fulfil its initial promise, then we could be talking about a whole new approach to social on the mobile device in 2016. The future will consist of events and calendars that matter, not an endless, un-curated news feed of random chatter and updates from people you don’t know.
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