Dayflash aims to make photo sharing enjoyable again
Over the last year, my team and I have spoken with many people about their experiences using today’s public photo sharing apps. And lots of people, including myself, have been frustrated with those apps. For instance, we’re tired of the Instagram algorithm and are frustrated that many of our followers aren’t seeing our latest posts. We’re unhappy with the Instagram crop and the over compression of our images. We’re also frustrated with the hashtag shadowban, and yes it’s real! I’ve experienced it as an illustrator on Instagram.
In addition, many Instagram users who have a creative passion have been struggling with declining engagement from followers on their posts and the next generation of creators are finding it more and more painfully difficult to maintain their visibility on the platform. This is because Instagram has new priorities and no longer prioritizes creators. Instead, Instagram is focused on increasing revenue by shifting timeshare away from home feed posts in favor of more financially lucrative mediums, such as stories, sponsored posts, shopping, long-form video, LIVE streaming, video chat and other types of mediums.
Not to mention, with the Instagram co-founders gone, Facebook is continuing to gradually integrate more and more of the Facebook and Snapchat experiences into Instagram, which is taking away more and more attention from a simple photo and video sharing experience that we love. As this transition continues to happen over time, what will be the fate of public photo and short-video sharing? And what will be the fate of creators?
We believe that if we don’t step forward to help make public expression and community around photo and short-video sharing a bigger and brighter part of the future, then Instagram and Facebook will have it’s way, stories and Facebook-like experiences will dominate in the near future and the world of creators may never reach its full potential.
Many people we’ve spoken with who have a creative passion share our same concerns. To address these concerns, Dayflash is stepping forward. We see an opportunity for a new social networking company to bring joy back to public photo and short-video sharing and do it at scale with a commitment to always putting the user first.
The core design of Dayflash is based on input from hundreds of students who have a creative passion from colleges including Columbia University, NYU and Stanford along with many thousands of creators who’ve been using Dayflash for several months so far.
Dayflash has introduced a unique photo and video sharing experience that is different in many big ways that users enjoy. The app enables users to share photos in a unique and immersive fullscreen image display format — it makes your photos look more beautiful and lifelike than ever before. This is partly because Dayflash doesn’t over compress photos and sacrifice quality like other mainstream photo apps. Photos on Dayflash are always rendered in HD quality (1080p).
There’s something really special about maintaining the original quality of a photo and allowing it to be seen in its full, lifelike size.
“We’ve invented a unique fullscreen image display format that is the first of its kind and that makes people’s photos look more immersive and beautiful than ever before on a mobile photo sharing app.” — Anthony Morgan, Co-founder, Dayflash.
Plus, it’s way faster and more immersive to view and like photos and videos on your feed with Dayflash’s swipe navigation and easy interaction gestures, such as a double tap to like a photo and gentle up and down swipe gestures thru the home feed instead of scrolling.
Users also say that it’s a lot faster and easier to post photos and videos on Dayflash. That’s because there are no hashtags — instead Dayflash uses keywords that people set to their account once when they join — and that’s it.
I strongly believe that we shouldn’t have to spend time adding hashtags to each and every photo we share just to get discovered by people who might be interested in our account and content. It should just happen. And that’s what keyword driven discovery is all about. It makes it happen without people even having to think about it.
Dayflash is the first all-visual app that uses machine-learning and account keywords — instead of hashtags — to power search results, explore and suggested users.
Keyword-powered discovery alleviates many of the common frustrations that many people have complained about with the hashtag model. Instead of using image hashtags like many apps do, Dayflash uses keywords to more easily connect people who share the same keywords and interests.
For instance, illustrators have been more easily discovering and connecting to other illustrators on Dayflash. Same with California photographers connecting to California photographers, foodies to foodies, NYU students to NYU students, and lots of other people connecting to other like-minded people who share similar interests and keywords.
Moreover, people are attracted to the chronological feed on Dayflash, which always shows you the latest posts from the people you choose to follow. In contrast, on apps that don’t have a chronological feed, many people miss posts from friends and a lot of fascinating accounts they had at one point followed but unfortunately no longer see on their feed any more — due to algorithm parameters. Since you always get to see posts from the people you follow on Dayflash’s chronological feed, users tend to follow only the people they truly want to connect with, which can make the experience on Dayflash richer, more authentic and more engaging.
Dayflash is not looking to improve on what other apps are doing. Instead, we’re introducing an experience that’s entirely different and that’s more aligned with what our users value. People use Dayflash alongside their other photo apps, because there are differences about Dayflash that people enjoy and that no other app provides.
Our platform is not just for creators. It’s for anyone who has a passion for photos and videos. We’re focused on making photo and short-video sharing more enjoyable again. And we’re focused on putting our users first over anything else, to ensure that their experience stays good over the long-term.
Dayflash is free to download and use. Check it out on the App Store and join today. An Android version will be available in the near future.
