If you have ever watched The Hangover, you know that the ending credits, where you finally see the pictures of the wild forgotten night the guys had in Vegas, is the cherry on top of the entire movie.
Last time you might have experienced a similar feeling was probably when, way back in the days, you, a friend or your mom happened to process a roll of film, to find out great pictures that, if you had reviewed too many times, you wouldn’t have kept, regretting it later.
If you wish to run away from the “strike the perfect pose”-apps and regain that old school spontaneity, Flashgap, “The Hangover” inspired application, will provide you the same thrill of unwrapping gifts on Christmas morning, by making your pictures disappear just after 3 seconds they have been taken, to then reappear on the application 12 hours later.
The app is very easy to use: once you have created your profile, you simply need to create an album and invite your friends to join and start taking pictures.
The album will be revealed only 12 hours later to all the participants in the group.
“In University, around 10 friends and I used to go to parties and strap a GoPro around our heads. Everyone would videotape the entire event, in particular the part of the evening spent apart, and the next day we would screen the entire footage on a big tv. It was so funny to discover together what happened the night before that I felt the need to scale that idea by creating an app” – told me Julian Kabab, the young and passionate CEO and founder of Flashgap, when I stopped by their office.
When talking about the catchy side of his app, Julian explained to me that users play with it in many different ways. Friends living in different countries would, in fact, use it to capture their nights apart and discover what they have been up to the day after, a way to be together even if physically apart.
Though, I think this is not the best way to use the app, there are more suitable application or sites to share moments from apart ( Snapchat or any messaging service), given the thrill of pictures disappearing for 12 hours comes actually from the shared experience, I believe the app has huge potential for events targeted to a young audience.
Launched less than a year ago, Flashgap managed to raise 1.5 million seed round and to launch in the US on Halloween, with the help of celebrity endorsements like Vanessa Hudgens. In less than a week from their launch, they were able to lock their first 40000 American users. Currently, the application counts a retention rate of 25% with still room to grow.
The next step indeed for Flashgap is to keep following their bigger vision and seek growth with an additional approach in between Whatsapp and its groups messaging and Instagram and its posts and news feed.
The application is available both on Android and iOS here.