Glimpse, an app which uses your Instagram photos to help you meet other users, has fully overhauled its iPhone app to make it easier to get a conversation started.
First launched in February, the team went back to the drawing board and started again from the ground-up for the second iteration. The result is what the company describes as “like people watching from your phone”.
It works by looking at the metadata of your photos (geolocation and hashtags) and then attempts to put you in contact with people who have similar interests or have been to the same places.
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There’s also been a fairly major change to the way in which the messaging system works. Previously you sent a ‘wink’ and the other user needed to approve whether they wanted to chat with you or not. Now, all conversations must be started with a photo and go to a separate section of the other person’s inbox by default.
The recipient still gets to control whether they want to ‘approve’ the message (and therefore move it to the main inbox) or reject it, though.
It’s an interesting decision, and probably a smart one – sending random ‘winks’ to people just feels a bit odd nowadays – that initial photo should help jump-start the conversation.
Whether or not the revamp will manage to convince people that Instagram can work as a perfectly effective pseudo-dating network is a different question. With “a dream-team of investors including First Round Capital, Google Ventures, Sherpa Ventures, Undercurrent Ventures, William Lauder and various angels,” it’s a question that will, sooner or later, need an answer.
Featured Image Credit – Getty Images
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