This article was published on February 3, 2015

Imoji launches messaging service for sending selfie stickers to your friends


Imoji launches messaging service for sending selfie stickers to your friends

Imoji, the app that turns your selfies into awesome iMessage stickers, today quietly launched a messaging platform in a big update to the app.

Overnight, Imoji has transformed from an app that simply facilitated finding and creating stickers, into a messaging platform where you can directly send them to your friends.

imoji

Instead of encouraging you to share stickers outside the app, Imoji now wants you to share them inside the app, on its own messaging service. You can send messages, photos and stickers and Imoji delivers them super snappily.

This makes sense as the company would probably want to own the eyeballs of its users for longer, but what’s disappointing is one of the big selling points was that you could get stickers out of the app easily and share them to any service, including iMessage, which you can no longer do.

The <3 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

It’s easy to see why the company would want to do this, but it removed the primary reason I used the app in the past. You can message anyone from your address book and they’ll get a message to download the app.

IMG_0803What worries me about Imoji’s pivot is that messaging is a crowded space; with apps like WhatsApp and Line being so prominent and having almost everyone onboard, convincing my friends to sign up to a new app just sounds tiring. Still, Imoji’s update is a legitimate push into being the place to go for sending stickers to your friends

The app also received the ability to perform image searches for things you want to create stickers of. If there wasn’t quite the perfect Miley Cyrus sticker available in the community, you can now perform an image search and create one yourself.

Imoji’s big update is available for iPhone users, from the App Store right now.

Imoji [iOS]

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.