How to use Kiwi, the hot app that beat out Snapchat for first place in the App Store
In June, the Q&A app Kiwi hit No. 1 in the App Store, displacing even apps like Snapchat and Instagram. Since then, it's stayed in the top 20 apps overall in the US. But what makes it so hot?
Kiwi goes beyond a Q&A app for friends and lets you ask or answer questions from anyone, even anonymous people. There are some basic questions like "What are you listening to right now?" that have thousands of responses from people listing the music they like. Newer questions on the app range from potato chip preferences to how old someone looks.
When you first sign up, you can either connect it to your Facebook or create a whole new account. Be careful if you're using your Facebook though or you might unintentionally spam your friends into joining!
The home screen of the app shows popular questions, people to follow, and what questions people who you follow have asked. The whole feel of it is pretty similar to Ask.Fm, which is another Q&A service.
If you're looking for a specific topic, you can always search posts nearby or posts that have photos or videos. Of course, including photos or videos in a post does leave the app open to the possibility of being used for nefarious reasons.
One reason why Ask.FM has struggled was a problem with cyberbullying. As Kiwi has taken off, there's definitely an influx of sexual questions and just pure spam accounts that want you to follow for followers.
People can ask you questions anonymously, which can be fun but also risky. Some users have already reported people harassing them through anonymous questions, but all of the questions I was answering seemed pretty normal.
There are also some safeguards in place. You can't anonymously ask the whole community or all your followers a question. Instead, you need to have your name on it to be able to poll multiple people.
The main point of the app though is to ask and answer questions, and see if other people have done the same. A question about music, answered by one of my friends, means I can see who else was asked the question and their responses.
As an app to scroll through fun Q&As, Kiwi hits all the high points, especially since it can deal with photos and videos. I'm still worried that it might fall into the trap where anonymous questions leads to bullying or too many sex-related spam bots — some of that is already present on the app. But I found myself drawn into it like I'm drawn into threads on Reddit: it's interesting to watch people answer questions about their life and Kiwi makes it easy to get drawn into it.
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