Via.Me – social sharing app for pictures, video, audio & text on mobile or desktop
by Paul Wilks
Sep 7, 2012 10:54 AM –
Install
Via.Me is a sharing platform that let’s you edit and share text, sounds, video and pictures. Not a massive leap away from apps like Instagram and Streamzoo, you can also share via Facebook and Twitter, follow and be followed by friends, like, favourite, comment, flag and repost. To summarise then, a slick mash-up of Twitter, Tumblr, Streamzoo, Audioboo and Instagram. It features an intuitive UI, great editing tools and is blissfully simple to use.
Price: Free
Tested on: HTC One X
Content Rating: Low Maturity
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Polished user interface!
- Smooth and easy to use!
- Ability to share text, video, audio and pictures!
- Nice editing features!
- Might be a good option for people disorientated by Facebook’s purchase of Instagram!
Cons
Features:
Via.Me is an uncomplicated and elegant media sharing app. It’s incredibly difficult not to draw comparisons to the likes of Instagram, which is a hugely popular multi-platform service. Similarities continue with the fact that Via.Me also has a web interface which unmistakably looks very much like Pinterest. It also shares sounds like Audioboo, pictures and video like Streamzoo, lets you edit in a similar way to Instagram and lets you combine these elements like Tumblr. Is it therefore one of those apps that’s a Jack-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none?
Via.me has lots of functionality and generally works well, regardless of what you use it for. Visually it would seem most users share pictures on the platform so ultimately it’s a rival to the likes of Instagram. The query might be though is why users would switch from the more popular platform to this? One aspect might be the recent Facebook takeover which many people seemed unhappy about. It could be that it offers more than just image sharing- you can post audio files, video and even just text if you want to, offering far more flexibility.
Unlike some of its rivals Via.Me has a web interface which, altogether, looks incredibly slick and well developed. You can use the service more or less exactly as you would the mobile app, and of course it all syncs together really well. I think the only issue I found with the app was stability. I found, especially to begin with, it crashed quite a lot. This aside I found the app to work well and, with all the features it includes, just needs a little more community to take its place alongside its older, more popular competitors.
If you’re using any one of the alternative services mentioned here and are perhaps looking for something new, with ‘more’ to it, Via.Me is definitely worth a look and, if stability issues are remedied, it could easily become a mobile social network of choice for many people.
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Via.Me – Trending
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Via.Me – Post pictures, text or both. Also add video and sound!
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Via.Me – Expanded pictures
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Via.Me – Crop and rotate
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Via.Me – Apply filters
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Via.Me – Feed 1
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Via.Me – Feed 2
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Via.Me – Find friends
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Via.Me – Not always stable
Usefulness:
For sharing your pictures, thoughts, philosophies, videos and sound files, Via.Me is an innovative platform for various forms of media. It would perhaps be improved by a larger user-base, a homescreen widget and resolution of stability issues but while nothing about the app felt especially ‘new’ (just replicated from various other applications), the combination of features makes it stand out as something for everyone.
Ease of Use:
Via.Me is incredibly uncomplicated to use, even slightly more intuitive than Instagram, in my opinion. There are clear tabs and navigation buttons to do all the things you want to use the app for and everything is very user-friendly.
Frequently Used:
As mobile user’s we often spread thin across very many social networks and sharing platforms. Instagram is massively popular- perhaps due to its simplicity and immediacy of usage. Many people I know share lots of pictures to Google+ and there’s little diminishing Facebook’s popularity- notably among people who prefer the large user-community. There’s clearly space in the market for Pinterest, who’s growth has been astronomical since its release. Is Via.me going to become as popular? Is it going to become the go-to solution for picture sharing over Instagram? Are you more likely to share thoughts there or on Twitter? I think it’s a tough call due to the very competitive space it ventures into.
It pretty much has all it needs to succeed besides the user-numbers, but it requires some serious publicity to catch up with the other big players. It could easily become something users flock to- the variety of media you can post is really impressive- but whether people prefer separate networks for their different items to share, places a big question mark over whether Via.Me will be used much at all.
Interface:
Silky smooth, great design, intuitive and very user friendly- everything you would expect from a modern mobile sharing platform. It does stutter a little and has some problems with crashing from time to time but these are things that could be ironed out relatively easily in an update or two.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
App Social Sharing,
Facebook,
Instagram,
Pinterest,
Streamzoo,
Tumblr,
Twitter,
Via.Me
Categorised in: Social
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