Ad: Our Apps Coverage is brought to you by Intel AppUp℠ center. Join the Intel AppUp℠ developer program to develop and sell your apps on the Intel AppUp℠ center.
Kabutar is photosharing app – rather a service – that allows users to click and share photos, add effects using different filters, ask questions through pictures, and sell items.
Developed by Karam Lakshman and Shubhendu Sharma, the app is available for the web and for the iPhone, and an Android version is on the cards. The project was seed funded by IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship. We tried the app on an iPhone 4, and here’s our take on it:
– At first glance, the app appears similar to the popular iPhone photo sharing app and network Instagram, with features like photo sharing, photo filters and frames, following users, comment or like features that are similar to Instagram. However, the app adds some more features including a daily photo section where users can upload their photo every day and the app plays a stop motion movie created out of the daily photos.
– Q&A: The app also offers a Q & A section where users can post questions along with photos for their followers/other users to answer in Yes/No/Maybe or a text answer.
– 4Sale: There’s also a 4Sale section, where users can post pictures of stuff they’d like to sell with contact details, acting like a photo classified. The sections displays photos posted by user that one follows, however, users can ‘explore’ popular picks, in addition to Nearby and Category wise listings.
Observations & Suggestions
– The additional features are interesting but at the end it would depend on the number of users that join the network, Social sharing on Facebook is limited to photos that the user takes. We did not get the option to share on Twitter.
– The interface has some rough edges from a usability perspective. For example tapping a user’s name does not link to his profile, but tapping below the user name does. Also there is no option to upload existing photos in the phone, which should be added.
– The app is still in beta and crashed a number of times while trying to access a user’s public photos.
– The app needs better social sharing integration across all sections and not just with user photos.
– Also, the nearby items in the 4Sale section did not load for us and got stuck and we had to force-restart the app.
– There is a ‘Flag for review’ option with all photos to address privacy issues and intellectual property violations.
– The photo thumbnails in the popular and other sections are blurry and aesthetically not appealing.
– The classifieds section should be improved and there should be a way to contact the seller through the app, for example a message box or a simple e-mail message delivery. The existing options display the user’s email or phone number which is not optimal.
