This article was published on August 7, 2012

Japanese Twitter app Feel On brings its comic book craziness to iOS


Japanese Twitter app Feel On brings its comic book craziness to iOS

Regular readers will recall that quirky comic book-like Twitter app Feel On landed on Android on July 2, and now its Tokyo-based developer, L is B Corporation, has released an iOS version of the app.

Actually, this isn’t the first time that Feel On has been available for Apple devices, it’s been out on iOS in Japanese for a while, but this is the debut of the overseas-focused English version.

The free app — which is now at version 3.0 — adds crazy, colorful animations to tweets and also allows the same unique approach to Facebook updates too.

The interface is, like the Android app, pretty easy to navigate and comics can be added to a new tweet simply by clicking through from the compose tweet screen. The animations are categorised under a range of titles, including ‘love’, ‘happiness’, ‘interest’, ‘anger’ and others.

One slight annoyance is the line of adverts that runs at the top of the Twitter stream, but this disappears as you scroll down, at least.

While the animations are placed in-line and visible for fellow Feel On users, they came through as a link on other Twitter clients, with an auto-generated #feelon hashtag (which is a little annoying, but valuable for discovering others that use the client.)

The effect isn’t quite the same across Twitter, unfortunately (or should that be fortunately). However, those followers that are seduced into clicking on the tweet for more will see the image previewed, as Twitter does for links:

As well as posting to Twitter, the app supports Facebook, which is easily set up – assuming Facebook’s mobile site will play nicely (not always a given).

The Facebook integration is limited however, and there is no way to peruse your timeline from inside the app. Equally, all posts must go to Twitter, making it impossible to post to Facebook only.

Feel On for Twitter version 3.0 is available in the App Store across 139 different countries. Those in Japan will be particularly interested as it now features premium animation from ‘STEINS;GATE’, a popular adventure game in the country.

L is B tells me that the visual novel has sold some 400,000 copies in Japanese and, with sets of skins — which run in the background for the app — available for $4.50 (350 JPY) for 55, it is pursuing a new revenue generation stream. The company plans to introduce more paid-for designs in the future.

So if you’re a fan of Asian style animations and comics, or just bored of your regular Twitter apps, Feel On is a worthy download for your iPhone or Android device. It isn’t for everyone, but a little variation never hurt anyone…right?

➤ Feel On: iOS | Android

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