
Povio, the polite photo app that students love, joins YC’s winter batch - bjenik
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/24/povio-the-polite-photo-app-that-students-love-joins-ycs-winter-batch/
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not_paul_graham
Definitely a good "disruption" to all the noise that is broadcast on twitter +
instagram by all those that you follow. I think they also nail it pretty much
with their tagline: _Play photo ping and stay in touch with friends_

If the founders are reading this, was this the original idea ? If not, I'd
love to know what did you all start with, and how you all pivoted to this
particular idea? (Crunchbase says: founded in October 2012)

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matevzpetek
I came up with an idea when I was on the top of a snowboard ramp(i was a
snowboard pro), trying to capture the moment and share it with my friends over
Instagram. But it felt like bragging, I didn’t want to collecting likes,
comments and build my ego. Than I thought - if my friends would ask me where I
am right now, I would be glad to show them and it would feel totally
unintrusive!

So that was the initial idea for pull photo sharing app!

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andraz
As a beta user for a year or so: it really feels good to be pinged. :)

And it's great entertainment to just browse what friends have been doing for
last 24h.

+1 from me

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hablahaha
What did I just read? I have really, really low standards for web content, but
this seriously reads like a fifth grade book report. "Povio is for now 100%
focused on growth. It actually sounds like Povio has some kind of shot in the
space."

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matevzpetek
That's true! But doing things that only have 1% chance is exciting. That’s
what life is all about! You know what is even harder? What has even lass that
1% chance? Winning a World Cup in bigair snowboard competition!

And I managed to do that 4 times.. If I don’t choose the hardest tasks out
there, my life would be boring ...

Easy as that.

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sgarman
OP is quoting and criticizing the article's writing not startup odds.

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hablahaha
What's going on here...

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kevrone
Interesting idea. A couple of suggestions: 1) Don't do the auto countdown
thing with the camera. Just let me take a picture. 2) My knee jerk reaction
when I received a photo was to ping my friend for another one right away. In
fact all my friends did this until we got fed up with each other. Maybe limit
pings to once an hour or something. 3) Give comments more focus. If someone
sends me a photo I want to interact with them about it. Maybe that's why I'm
heading to ping them so quickly...

Otherwise I'm happy to see a novel approach to social networking.

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PaulJulius
Definitely agree on getting rid of the countdown feature. It's definitely bad
as a first user experience; almost certain the first picture anyone takes will
be bad and they may not see the "Slide down to retake" text.

Also, I like to be able to send text with the picture too, just to give a bit
of context. I really imagine using this as a reverse Snapchat that let's me
get pictures instead of sending them. Being able to give context to the
picture is great. On a related note. I like being able to see comments on a
picture when scrolling through the feed. Making the comment viewing section a
separate screen in the app makes it less useful.

Also as a comparison to Snapchat. How long do the pictures stay around.
Forever?

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sasajost
Agree, it can be a little tricky for 1st experience...but for the ones that
stay, is a convenient feature.

I think the comment next to the pic would make it worse - pics are the
easiest/the fastest way of consuming the content. This is why the News feed is
now really light - you can scroll/check out new pics really fast, and I like
that. If I want "heavier News feed", I go to Twitter/FB/...

Pic stays in the News feed for 24h, as far as I know.

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doesnt_know
Instead of creeps silently going through photo feeds, they can directly ping
you for more photos!

Seriously though, I hope this idea catches on and it can possibly be the start
of a trend of social media users becoming more "humble". It would be nice to
see things flipped on it's head and move away from the push model of "here I
am, here is a constant stream of useless shit about me".

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mkaziz
Agreed. I definitely think this is the sort of thing that would encourage you
to share photos with your close friends (would you ping a random stranger for
updates?). Think many smaller circles, instead of gigantic newsfeeds.

However, by nature of that alone, photos thusly shared are more likely to be
of a private sort. I'm curious about what level of privacy these guys will
offer and how they intend to back it up.

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Zigurd
Is this thread being astroturfed? So many lo-karma/zero-karma commenters.

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tzaman
You actually went and checked? :)

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Zigurd
A lot of the comments look like Yelp reviews from the cousins of a pizza shop
owner.

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tzaman
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the team is Slovenian, and
we're quite proud of what these guys have achieved, and if we can help in any
way, we do.

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mkhalil
"Photo apps today are about a traditional feed model — you post, and it gets
pushed out. The problem with that is it does not work terribly well with shy
people – and into that category fall millions of teenagers."

Shy people still won't ping others. Don't see how this will solve that
problem.

Oh well.

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tonyarkles
Shy people will get pinged by their friends and feel like they've been invited
to share. I think that's what they're getting at, not positive.

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mercer
Yeah, it's flattering _and_ would make me want to take a picture to oblige.
Very clever.

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fharper1961
I really liked the idea, so I just tried it out on my android tablet. Of
course critical social networking mass isn't there yet, so I wanted to invite
some friends.

Here are a couple of things I noticed * It took me a while to figure out that
the app wanted to send invitations via SMS, which of course want working on my
tablet. * you can't uninvite the people you've invited (tapping should toggle
the invite state) * there isn't any OK button to send the invites.

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mcintyre1994
Really nice idea, and I love the name! Out of interest, does anybody know how
they went about seeding it in a university? The article just skips over it as
a quick step along transitioning to SV, but it sounds really hard to do.

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natasham25
I like the concept, and event want to use this, but maybe you can have more
thought put in to the example friends. I do not categorize my friends as Mr.
Example, Miss Hotty, and Best Buddy....especially as a woman. The Miss Hotty
is especially creepy - you want guys to send pings to just hot girls? This
feels like harassment.

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lalos
Pretty cheesy right?, I wrote my thoughts about it in this post
[https://medium.com/p/c0cc85f9c6db](https://medium.com/p/c0cc85f9c6db)

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natasham25
"Mr. Example shares a photo of his delicious food, Best Buddy shows off his
coffee and Miss Hotty shares a photo of her lingerie laying on her bed and a
body shot in a changing room. "

Wow! I did not get to that screen, but that's seriously disturbing. Thanks for
posting. Surprised none of the mentors at YC mentioned this to them.

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lost_name
One of the things I liked about Snapchat was the ability to find friends
_without_ using Facebook. I think that would be a good addition here.

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ipince
How is it "joining" the winter batch? Isn't that batch just about done now?

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loki123
Great success story. @matevzpetek would you mind sharing more detailed steps
on how you seeded the app at Santa Clara University? Impressive stats - Inside
4 weeks, 30% of the University’s students – 1,200 students – signed up for
Povio

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gum_ina_package
Android user here - anyone else having a difficult time using this app? So
much of it feels like a hackathon hack. It's shoddy, unresponsive, and
overcomplicated.

Take pinging for example, when I added a new friend (and she accepted) I
couldn't ping her. The orange circle never showed up. I had to navigate to
several different views for it to activate. Also, commenting on a photo opens
a.... popupbox? What?

I think the idea is kinda fun and I hope these guys succeed, but I also think
they need to rethink their UI.

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natdempk
I like that this both starts a conversation and provides a conversation topic
in the form of an appealing picture. Definitely would use this if it was in my
area.

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rdl
This looks pretty interesting (I just saw a demo); the old facebook strategy
of winning a specific college campus, then replicating to other campuses,
seems to work well.

(It's also interesting how a world-class athlete has gone into startups; there
are definitely a bunch on wall street and in sales, but doing a startup,
outside sports, isn't as common I think. Pretty awesome.)

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tadruj
I'm always taking a photo of my screen. I need blur functionality, because I
don't want people to read my code. I solve this now by shaking the phone, but
since I did this 500+ times already, you might consider a feature.

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tomazstolfa
I think they shouldn't. Simplicity is the key of Povio and they are doing an
amazing job at keeping it minimal ;)

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mrmch
I've been using Povio for the last 3 months; pinging friends is incredibly
fun, and the network effect it has is amazing.

Povio is a great way to stay in touch with remote friends.

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seeingfurther
Very well done product video on their site. No voice over or explanation at
all. Right into showing the product in a perfect use case. Catchy tune also!

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malpal78
I'm addicted to POVIO! my friends and I are having a ball using it. much
better and more chill than snap chat in my opinion.

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ASneakyFox
I still don't get how this is different from just texting.. I must be too far
out of the loop on this stuff.

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ameister14
I really like this concept. This actually sounds like a photo app I would use,
not just browse occasionally.

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tomazstolfa
been using this since the start and the evolution of the product is just
amazing. The team is doing a wonderful job at simplifying everything around a
very good core experience.

I hardly open Instagram these days and don't use Snapchat, but have been using
Povio 5+ times/day over the last year.

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seivan
It's a really polished application (iOS), I was quite impressed when trying it
out.

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nsmnsf
How does Povio make money?

~~~
mkhalil
It doesn't. It waits to be bought.

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tzaman
I'm using it on a daily basis, more than twitter actually.

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mihelca
Love it! Way more useful than FB or Snapchat!

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Tomba
I love this app. It is the most used 3rd party app on my iPhone. I cant
imagine better way for fast communication with frends. Keep up the good work
!!!

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ZenoArrow
I like this, I can see it being popular.

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nkran
Simple, fun & fun. I love it.

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sasajost
The easiest way for staying in touch with my friends and family, love the
simplicity.

