Pixplit: An Instagram for social photo collages that’s a lot more fun than you might think

The idea of an ‘Instagram for photo collages’ may sound pretty worthless, but in reality it’s a lot more fun than you might think. Pixplit is an iOS app (Android version coming soon) that allows users to collaborate with others, creating multiple images in a single frame.

Pixplit comes from the team behind news aggregator app Hitpad, and it launched at StartTWS in Israel in October, winning first place and impressing our contributor Shira Abel. Since then, it’s been updated with additional features.

So, what’s it all about then? To start a new post (called a ‘split’) on Pixplit, you choose a split-frame layout, fill one of the slots with a photograph, add an option filter (of course there are filters!) and then publish it to the Playground section of the app. Here, your Pixplit followers can add photos to the other parts of the layout to complete them.

Browsing the results of collaborations on Pixplit, they tend to vary between artistic and humorous and the quality of splits users post runs the full gamut from highly impressive to pretty hideous. If you’re looking for inspiration, a Featured section of the app includes themed sections like #StrikeAPose (people, er, striking a pose), #MagicHour (sunrises and sunsets) and #BonAppetit (food), showing that there’s room for memes to spread via Pixplit.

While it’s still in its early days, the app clearly has room to develop a niche audience of avid photo collage creators, adding to each others’ creations. As with Instagram, postings can be ‘Liked’, commented on and shared. The recent update added improved profiles that allow you to see any user’s Completed, Open and Liked splits. You can also see similar splits to the one you’re currently viewing.

When it comes to turning Pixplit into a business, the team behind the app says that it’s looking to that popular target for startups these days, brands. While “Brands will want to use us to reach their audiences” is a common phrase from the lips of many a founder, Pixplit does remind me a little of multimedia collaboration tool Webdoc, which brands have indeed taken to, so there may well be real potential for household names to reach out to fans in order to collaborate on collages, perhaps for competitions.

While the viability of Pixplit as a business remains to be proven, it’s certainly a fun way to express yourself this holiday season and beyond.

➤ Pixplit / App Store

Image credit: Thomas Northcut / Thinkstock

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