These Ex-Google And Facebook Execs Just Launched An App That Adds Custom Audio To Your Photos
The app's creators, Carl Sjogreen and Adrian Graham, are both well-versed in the tech world: They met while working at Google and then created a travel app together called Nextstop which Facebook acquired in 2010. They left Facebook in 2012 to work on Shadow Puppet and funding for this new venture came from several Facebook angel investors as well as Greylock Partners. (They declined to disclose numbers.)
To use the app, select photos from your phone's gallery then record yourself talking about them. The app also gives you the ability to zoom in on pictures or highlight different parts with a yellow circle that appears when you tap your screen. Each creation is called a "puppet" and you can share them through text, email, Facebook, or Twitter.
The possibilities are endless. You could use the app to share details about your latest vacation, send a sweet message to a loved one, rehash something funny you witnessed... Or let a toddler cutely talk about cute things.
"We're really proud that the that the product is easy enough to use that a five or six-year-old kids can create something cool with it," Sjogreen told Business Insider.
He's also excited by the idea of teachers using the app to visually explain topics to their students (like this guy schooling us on turtle shells). There's no maximum puppet length, but the app encourages you to spend no more than 15 seconds on each picture to minimize rambling explanations. You can submit your puppets to be posted publicly, which leaves the potential for all sorts of crazy, creative stuff.
Shadow Puppet just launched today and is available for free download for iOS, but everyone else will have to wait. The bright side: You don't have to have the app to receive and watch your friends' creations.