less than three Weeks ago, French startup Ammo released the ID. As I pointed out in my article covering this much-anticipated launch, ID was Imo’s first idea. Today, the social consumer startup is releasing its second app called Capture.
Once again, this new app will be set apart by social app enthusiasts and other companies working in this space, as Amo was co-founded by 10 industry veterans who cut their teeth at Zenly. , the location-sharing app that was acquired by Snap, became Europe’s largest social app with 18 million daily active users and was later shut down by Snap.
Amo’s first app ID is all about creating (and browsing) personalized profile pages. It’s a visualization on social networks with a sense of intimacy and space that doesn’t limit you to a 3×3 grid of photos. Possession is something completely different.
“This is something I’ve been thinking about most obsessively for the last 12 years of my life. They all make photo apps and I use other photo apps every day. Why can’t I make it myself? How will I do it?” Imo founder Antonin Martin told me a few weeks ago.
“This is something I’ve been thinking about most obsessively for the last 12 years of my life. They all make photo apps and I use other photo apps every day. Why can’t I make it myself? Anton Martin
Capture is a radically different photo sharing app. As the name suggests, calling it a photo-sharing app isn’t even fair because Imo spends more time thinking about capturing photos than looking at other people’s photos. It’s a fun and straightforward take on a smartphone camera that takes advantage of the many sensors in your phone.
When you open the app, capture starts immediately with your camera’s viewfinder. There’s a big shutter button in the middle, and a few smaller icons next to it.
Capture is a camera app — and it’s social. It’s meant to be used as a way to capture photos in just a few seconds, without having to think about it, just like you would with the iPhone’s default camera app.
When you take a photo, nothing happens. No preview screen, no action buttons, nothing.
“Usability takes a back seat, you don’t get fed up. It’s a creativity-first app, and that’s really what it is,” Martin said. “If I’m walking down the street and I see an astronaut that I like, I just grab it, I’m there, I take a photo, I turn off my phone, it’s my is in the pocket I don’t spend minutes watching previews.
In the background, the photos you take with Capture are saved in your photo library and shared with your friends. No need to think about what you should share or not and who you should share your photos with. Every photo you take with Capture is shared.
A personal camera
A piece of content in a capture is not just a photo. By default, when you tap the large shutter button, Capture saves two images – the one you see in the viewfinder and a wide-angle photo.
The app has small buttons that are basically other photo modes. Smiley face allows you to capture a foreground – what you see and a selfie. The third button is a super zoom mode that captures some photos that are more and more zoomed.
These features allow you to enhance the context of your images. They can also be considered artistic tools or entertainment opportunities.
But when you look at your friends’ photos, you only see one photo and that’s it. This time, Capture takes advantage of the high speed to convert a still image into a moving image. You tilt your phone back and forth to reveal wide-angle shots, selfies or zoomed-in photos.
As with ID, Amo has integrated a ton of haptic effects so you can really feel the app as it vibrates slightly in your hand when you swipe your phone back and forth. It is a conceptual communication gesture and it works very well.
One thing I’ve noticed when people start talking about Capture is that they say “take my phone” because it’s easier to explain the app when the other person can move the device in their hand.
Here’s a video that explains what I mean (haptic feedback not included):
Now, what about the filter? These things are popular in other social apps, right? Imo lets you customize your camera, but the company doesn’t call it filters.
When you swipe left on the main screen, you get several options. There is a menu that allows you to adjust the color temperature and general feel of your photos. You pick a color, tap a bunch of buttons until you’re happy with the result. Amu does not label these buttons or provide any explanations. It’s all about finding your style without compromising.
“There is a button for drawing and a button for releasing stickers. And the goal here is that you can create your own signature,” said Martin. Once you hit the save button, all your future photos will be customized with those customizations. “We tried to be more personal than others, We let you really define your own style and keep it that way,” he added.
And the arrest is deeper than you think. There are some hidden tricks that users will discover over time. For example, you can place your palm in front of the selfie camera for a few seconds to focus on a different subject.
This way, you can save multiple camera styles without deleting your previous style. You can also move the app buttons if you want to place them in the corner or if you want to make the front button bigger.
A social camera roll
At the bottom of the app, there’s a banner that lets you know if your friends have shared new photos. When you tap on it, it opens a feed of the most recent photos. You can add comments and see where the photo was taken.
Swiping through these photos feels like browsing a camera roll shared with your friends. Of course, this is something that messaging apps like WhatsApp have nailed with group chats. But the content in the capture is less polished, more unusual. It shows what your friends actually do every day.
![](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Amo-Capture-feed.png)
Image credit: Romain Delt / TechCrunch
So there you have it, Imo is a startup building a galaxy of social apps. ID and Capture are the first two apps. There may be more apps down the road.
And this can be a powerful method when it comes to user development. When you create a profile and add friends in an app, you’ll find your friends in other Amo apps. You can see notifications from ID in the capture, and vice versa.
It is a novel approach in the social consumer space. Imo isn’t just trying different things, it’s essentially creating different social apps, connecting them to a unified experience and putting them on your phone’s home screen — one icon at a time.
Another common theme is that Amo wants to focus on real-life friends and loved ones. And this is also the case with the capture.
“When users switch to consumption mode, they have a counter of content to consume. They know that it takes a maximum of three to four seconds per piece of content,” said Martin. “So users don’t get caught up in an endless feed of TikTok, where you risk getting sucked into 3 hours worth of stuff.”
And when you have rejected the last photo, the app closes itself. That means it’s time to go back to real life, explore and capture interesting photos for your friends.