With their site launching in October and their app launching in November, Pheed has been able to climb to the top of the app store as the #1 social networking app, this is above both Facebook and Twitter. Not only that, but Pheed is now #16 out of all free apps in the app store.
You are probably wondering what Pheed is. Pheed was founded by O.D. Kobo and inspired from Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. So what did Kobo do? He took all those social media sites and combined them into one and called it Pheed. So original, right?
Lets break it down:
1. The log in screen
First of all the background is a picture of someone’s hands tattooed and it says “Express Yourself”. To me, this is telling users that you can express yourself by putting permanent ink on your body…ok great first message Pheed! Secondly, they ask you to sign in via Facebook, Twitter, or email. If Pheed wants to be its own social media platform they shouldn’t be having users sign in using other social media platforms. If I remember correctly Facebook or Twitter asked me to sign up via email. Other social media sites that aren’t so big, however, do ask you sign up the same way Pheed does. Nonetheless, if Pheed is trying to draw users away from Facebook and Twitter, they should be using Facebook and Twitter for signing up.
2. Create new Pheed
This is the same as creating a new tweet on twitter, new status on Facebook, or new photo on Instagram. It allows you to write text, add audio, add photo, add video, add a broadcast/event. It also allows you to copyright your pheed. An advantage it has over twitter is that a pheed can be 420 characters compared to twitters 140 characters. No longer will people have to shorten their thoughts!
3. Timeline
Pheed has created their own timeline, not to get confused with the Facebook timeline, it is very different. The Pheed timeline is the same as a Facebook newsfeed. The timeline shows text, photos, video, audio, and broadcasts of people you are following. When reading someone else’s pheed, pheed allows you to choose from the following buttons “I love this”, “I don’t love this”, “Keep this”, or you can flag it. You can also share a pheed on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or via email, and you can remix a pheed. Remix is the exact same thing as retweeting on twitter.
4. Keepers
This feature allows you to look back at all the pheeds you have ever clicked “keep this” for. I think this is the best feature of pheed because no other social media site does this well. On Facebook you can like things, but it is hard to look back at everything you have ever liked. On Instagram you can like pictures. There is a page on Instagram that you can go to, to view all the photos you have liked, but it doesn’t show you all of them (I haven’t figured it out, but I think you can only see the last 30 photos or so that you liked) Pheed allows you to keep track of everything you wanted to keep and it lets you sort it by text, audio, photo, video, or broadcast.
5. Monetization
Pheed gives you the option to charge anywhere between $1.99-$34.99 for a pay-per-view live broadcast or for your monthly channel subscription. Of course you have to split the proceeds with pheed 50-50.
This self-funded start up has topped twitter and Facebook in the app store and has generated millions of users in only a couple of months! Pheed clearly is having success with users, but is this just a fad? With the majority of users being teens, does pheed have the opportunity to make money or even grow to obtain older generations?
I am all for start-ups, but Pheed seems to be stepping on territory that isn’t theirs. With features way to similar to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr are they going to be able to drive users away from those sites and towards theirs? It will be interesting to see if Pheed will do the impossible: become the new Facebook.
Sources used:
http://mashable.com/2013/03/10/pheed-walkthrough/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ilyapozin/2013/02/20/teens-drive-pheed-to-1-social-app/
Informative post Mollie. I wonder if Pheed allows you to see who views your profile. If so, this explains why teens are interested in their service. Looks like they are building a business around a bunch of features that the big social networks don’t want to add, for various reasons.I say this because I’m sure facebook has thought about adding these features, but decided against them because of a really good reason.
After reading your post I understand Pheed is a lifestreaming platform. I’ve seen several of these “startup” and quickly “diedown” in the past. Some had gimmicks like join our site and get a QR code with the link to all your social media activity…. dozens of these. And others were open liscense projects like Sweetcron. And the first lifestreaming platform which i signed up for Chi.mp is no more.
I no longer see the value added with life stream software; I think this website is doomed to fail. There are solutions already to the problem they seem to be solving. For example, If you are that curious about what the people in your network are saying you can add each of your feeds to an RSS reader of your choice.
As of now, it looks like Pheed is offering a solution to people who do not like the way content is displayed on the big networks. The features look like gimmicks to me. But hey if people want these features, by all means allow them to pay for them.
I know facebook is a photo sharing platform that happens to also be a social network. Twitter is in a class of it’s own… i haven’t really thought about what it is. I would say it’s an information sharing social network. Obviously these networks are not restricted to these purposes, and are different things to different people depending on the way they are used. I don’t know what Pheed is nor do I completely understand the problem they are solving. If Pheed’s founders don’t find a way to explain what problem their service/website solves then they will have a hard time.
Also, these are my initial impressions. I could be completely wrong, and these guys might be on to something here.
Best,
M. Ali
First, let’s remember that FB isn’t all that original, but copied many elements of the failed Friendster. What I’ve read about Pheed is that it is catching on as the “UnFacebook” for teens who don’t like their parents being in their social networks. I think this is legitimate, because it’s a legitimate need. I think it less likely that Pheed would actually become a competitor to FB, and more likely that it if actually caught on, FB would just buy it (like they did instagram) and make it a sub-community.
That’s a good point, but I don’t know how well Pheed will catch on. It has a lot of users now, but only time will tell if its just a fad or if it’s here to stay.
Thanks for the overview of Pheed; I’ve been wondering what all the hype is about. My reaction to your post though is that Pheed is not going to catch on as much as everyone has been claiming. It offers nothing really new or exciting, but just takes the niches of every other site and combines them into one. Personally, I do not necessarily want the ability to do everything all in one place. One of the beauties of Twitter is that it is just small 140-character tweets. I don’t go to Twitter when I want to read peoples’ long trails of thought. I am confused by the pay-per-view aspect as well; I don’t know which of my friends I could charge to view my content. If I am trying to share with them, why would I charge them? It’s definitely all the buzz right now, but not something I think I will be joining.
I completely agree with you. They are definitely trying to take all of social media and put it into one spot. It seems as though they are trying to kick out all other social media sites and say “hey just use our site because you can do everything and more on ours”.
I however did join to see what the hype was all about, but I didn’t like it one bit. It was way to hectic and hard to follow everything. I think I will stick to each individual social media site as well as continue to use hoot suite (which is a much better one stop destination to meet all your social media needs). Of course Hoot suite seems like they have a very different mission than Pheed has.
I looked into Pheed, and I signed up? Why? Because, let’s be real, it was inevitable, and I’d rather not be in denial.
I really like the idea of Pheed, but I don’t think it is all I want yet. What I imagined Pheed to be is basically a dumping ground for everything I post everywhere: Tumblr, WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, my other twitter, my other blog, Pinterest, myspace, youtube, and basically anything I let it.
As far as I can tell, Pheed is not all this, but maybe it will become this? Or hopefully something will do this. I can dream.
To me Pheed seems more of a place to post whatever you want. You can of course share what you post on Facebook, twitter, and tumblr, but it doesn’t take what you post on Facebook, twitter, and tumblr and automatically dump it onto your Pheed page.
Thanks for the overview! This is an interesting example of the implications of network effects — Facebook became too successful as soon as has parents on it, and youth-flight occurs. This is also, in some sense, indicative of the lack of innovation in the social media space at the moment.
The current ‘startup’ business model seems to be:
1. Take features from a successful social netowrk
2. Change color scheme
3. Rename features to a new set of buzzwords
4. Market yourself as the “not-other network”
5. …
6. Profit?
How long can this last?
Cool! I had not heard of Pheed yet, actually. I always love learning about platforms whether I end up using them or not.
I wonder if the advantage its holds that you identify as Keepers will last very long. I think Facebook’s graph search will allow users to do exactly what you mention in your post. With graph search, a possible query can be “Show me all of the photos I’ve liked,” and it will bring up all of those photos. I’m sure the same goes for links, status, etc.