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While Google continues to add more features to\u00a0its two social communication apps Allo<\/a> and Duo<\/a>, TechCrunch has learned that it has quietly been working on\u00a0least one more social app. Google has been\u00a0developing\u00a0a new social app that lets small groups edit photos together and then organise them for future enjoyment:\u00a0think Path<\/a> meets Snapchat-style filters\u00a0and edits meets Google\u2019s imaging smarts.<\/p>\n Google confirmed the existence of the app after we asked about it, and told\u00a0us that (for now)\u00a0is an experiment, one of many it\u2019s running.<\/p>\n But it sounds like Google may be downplaying this a bit. \u00a0According to our sources, one plan had been to launch\u00a0the app during\u00a0its I\/O event in May \u2014 much as it did last year with Duo<\/a> and Allo<\/a> \u2014 although from what we understand right now there is no specific date set.<\/p>\n Could the announcement this week of Clips<\/a> from Apple, a video editing app that will also use AI, image recognition and speech recognition, also have played a part in deciding timing?<\/p>\n We also don\u2019t know what name\u00a0Google is\u00a0planning for it, but here is what\u00a0we do know.<\/p>\n The approach the developers are\u00a0taking is not to make \u201cyet another messaging app\u201d\u00a0but more of a collaborative social photo app. Users can create groups for sharing pictures. And then group members would all be able to edit and tag the same pictures.<\/p>\n Alongside this, Google would apply some of its own computer vision expertise and technology\u00a0\u2014 currently used across services like YouTube, Google\u2019s image search, and Google Photos \u2014 to help users\u00a0along: it will be able to identify objects in a photo to tag them and organise them and in the future search for them, as well as to help edit and apply filters to the pictures.<\/p>\n We think some of the photo features in the\u00a0app\u00a0sound a lot like Clips, the app that Apple is planning to release in April that will use \u00a0\u201cThey are building a competitor to Path,\u201d is how one person we know described it, in reference to the social app founded by Dave Morin, the investor who also was an early employee at Facebook; and Shawn Fanning and Dustin Mireau, both formerly of Napster.<\/p>\n Path gained some early popularity for providing a way for small groups of friends to share pictures and chat with each other, one of the early counterbalances to the more open-ended, share-everything tendencies on services\u00a0like Twitter and Facebook.<\/p>\n In a little twist of what might have been, Google even tried to buy it<\/a>. But as is often the\u00a0way with\u00a0apps, Path eventually waned in popularity. It was eventually sold<\/a> to Korean\u00a0messaging giant\u00a0Kakao in 2015 (it\u2019s still around<\/a> btw).<\/p>\n Google has had a very patchy history when it comes to social media, and\u00a0it\u2019s an area that the company\u00a0still trying to get right. The current strategy seems to be one of running a bunch of slightly different apps and efforts simultaneously<\/a> to see what works, and what does not (which could be one reason why this was worked on as a separate app rather than, say, as part of an update to Google Photos).<\/p>\n While Allo and Duo continue to get updates, Spaces \u2014 a group app for sharing and exploring links to things by tapping into other existing Google services, which seems closest\u00a0to what it\u2019s trying to build in the app that\u2019s being tested now \u2014 closed down<\/a> after less than a year<\/a>.<\/p>\n Then there is G+, still going but not the social networking magnet that Google once envisioned it could be. Google Wave, Google Buzz and Orkut are among the various efforts that have come and gone after failing to get enough traction.<\/p>\n Why keep returning to social? Because Google\u00a0faces competition from the likes of\u00a0Facebook, Twitter and now Snapchat for consumers\u2019 \u2014 and thus advertisers\u2019 \u2014 attention. Many (not all but many) users today do\u00a0not think of search engines first when looking for information, deciding\u00a0how to\u00a0spend\u00a0their money, and finding\u00a0things to entertain themselves. They go to these other apps, and that ultimately can cut into Google\u2019s mainstay advertising business and revenues.<\/p>\n YouTube, with its focus on user-generated videos\u00a0mixed with premium content like Vevo, remains\u00a0Google\u2019s most successful social play, although it\u2019s known more for ushering in virally popular material\u00a0rather than for helping to keep the conversation going around it (although Google\u00a0does do some of that, too, in videos\u2019\u00a0comments section).<\/p>\n The fact that Google is considering how it can leverage some of the tech that\u2019s been built to help power image search on YouTube, its search portal and its Photos app, to see if that\u00a0can be used to get a foothold in social is interesting. As is the timing: Apple will be releasing its own gentle step into social media apps \u2014 Clips<\/a>, which lets you edit videos and then share them on various social networks \u2014 in April.<\/p>\n Featured Image: montillon.a<\/a>\/Flickr<\/a> UNDER A CC BY 2.0<\/a> LICENSE<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/03\/14050063737_3f183005a2_k.jpg?w=680\")
While Google continues to add more features to\u00a0its two social communication apps Allo and Duo, TechCrunch has learned that it has quietly been working on\u00a0least one more social app. Google has been\u00a0developing\u00a0a new social app that lets small groups edit photos together and then organise them for future enjoyment:\u00a0think Path meets Snapchat-style filters\u00a0and edits meets Google’s… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
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