So 'Peach' Is Dead. What Did We Learn In It's Short Lifespan?
The original vision for this story was going to be a "how to" guide for getting started on Peach. But at No. 45 on the social networking app store chart in the UK, and out of the top 100 in America, this fad died just as quick as it arrived. Going the way of Meerkat and Path, is there something we can learn from the short-lived experience?
Peach started with such high hopes, created by Dom Hoffman, co-founder of popular app Vine. And underneath the strange user interface (no centralised newsfeed?), the app was in a good position to provide what people in 2016 actually want from social media: a closed network to communicate just with friends.
Sure, influencers (hate using that word) make the world go round, providing 1% of the content that 99% of the users share, but that's not the whole story. Stripping this element away in favour of peer-to-peer communication is a strong move equivalent to the primary use of Snapchat, the darling of social networking this year.
Beyond this, competitors should take a note from the interface of actually sharing updates. Using 'Magic Words,' users get access to post different elements such as GIFs, weather, location and activity levels.
And now for the final lesson; something that should be taken by every tech journalist out there. Please take any new social network with a pinch of salt before reporting...yes this does make me a hypocrite. We shouldn't write about networks and provide false optimism, to those who search for the "next best thing" through us. It is a responsibility to test these and provide an honest opinion, not generate false excitement through the key points of a press release.
