Papertrail logs: Frustration-free log management.

Home Workouts by FitnessAI

Maker

Hi PH! Trail is a way to catalog and share your entire life. All the videos you share on the same day are combined into one movie. There's no editing or filtering - videos taken on trail are immediately posted and added to your movie for the day on your profile. What results is a series of truly raw and uncut movies detailing your day-to-day life. It basically turns everyone into an instant vlogger! There are a few known bugs (still in beta) but the MVP is available to download today and I would love your feedback.

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9yr ago

Please delete

Anchor

@jakemor congrats on Trail! The onboarding was super easy, any particular reason to sign up with emails vice FB/Twitter? Recording was super easy to use and the app itself is smooth to operate in. I noticed you could make "snaps" (what do you call them here, trails?) private. How do you think that'll effect your discovery feature? Again, congrats! It's great to see more vertical video apps out there 😺

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9yr ago

Jake Mor

Home Workouts by FitnessAI

Maker

@caprihiggins Thanks Capri! I feel like once you implement login with fb/twitter you are married to them. I wanted to see how far I can get without it... Apple also makes you use X's api in a significant way if you want to implement a "Login with X" button (you can't exclusively pull email / profile pic). I wouldn't be ready to include references to other social media platforms until Trail takes off (*if Trail takes off!). Regarding privacy- there are 2 kinds of privacy modes. Private accounts aren't featured anywhere, and their posts are only visible to friends. Friendship constitutes two ppl following each other. A private video on the other hand is private to only the poster- no matter what. I felt like those privacy options would allow anyone to be just about as private as they would like, which is what I was goin for 🙈 🙉 🙊

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9yr ago

Jason Wire

@jakemor Cool app, and congrats on launching! Also, smart move on not marrying yourself to FB/Twitter. I've seen plenty of issues arise, and more people than you might think (usually younger) are averse to using them for sign in. A couple questions: 1) The auto-posting without preview reminds me of Beme--but unlike Beme, I was expecting a preview/confirmation step. Intentional? I didn't feel duped but I could see others wanting a heads up on the posting process. 2) Similarly, I think a key benefit of auto-posting would be to encourage a user to continue capturing lots of clips, but it interrupts that flow by taking a user directly to their content profile. Any thoughts on that decision? Just curious what your ideal user funnel is at the moment. 3) Is there any type of content that you feel Trail lends itself to better than another app? Again, congrats!

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9yr ago

Jake Mor

Home Workouts by FitnessAI

Maker

@jasonwhyre Thanks for the questions! I'll preface by describing what influenced almost every design choice I made: Trail is meant to replace the pictures you take that get lost in your camera roll. This means adding to trail should be as quick as taking a picture-- so instead of spending 5-10 seconds taking a picture, you can spend 5-10 seconds adding to your trail. It also means adding to trail should add more context to what you capture than the regular camera app. That's why trail only allows video (I always preach that a 5 second video is at least a million times better than a still image), geo tags each clip, adds a timestamp to each clip as well, and turns all the videos you take on the same day into a simple chronological movie. I really encourage you to use trail on your next family vacation. You'll cherish the movies trail makes for you. 1) There's no review process because when you review a video you just took you immediately start judging it. I wanted to make a point in the early versions to not have a focus on reviewing/judging/filtering your content. 2) At first I wanted it to be clear that your videos get posted to your profile. By using the current animation it makes it clear that the video is being added to "Today" and you also intuitively assume that by tapping the Today row you can watch your trails for that day. This also prevents users from capturing the same moment twice, which may break up the flow of your trail that day. I think I may change this in the future, if the data shows people posting multiple trails at a time. 3) Raw and uncut daily vlogging. These days when I watch people's snap stories I get the sense that they are too picture perfect. Also- they disappear! Where's the fun in that? When you just start following someone on snapchat you can't even see their story for that day. How are you supposed to discover new people that way? So if you hear from your friend "follow justin TV on snapchat" and you do, none of their content is readily available to you. Snapchat puts a focus on where you are today. Trail lets people learn how they got there.

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9yr ago

Jason Wire

@jakemor Thanks for the great reply and answers!

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9yr ago

Ben Tossell

Makerpad

Interesting to see another app in this space but how does the Snapchat Memories release affect this now?

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9yr ago

Jake Mor

Home Workouts by FitnessAI

Maker

@bentossell It affects Trail a great deal, but as far as I know you are still unable to view other people's previous posts with snapchat. The point of Trail is to be able to watch someone else's life not only as it unfolds, but also see how they got where they are today.

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9yr ago

Ben Tossell

Makerpad

@jakemor I think thats what Memories allows you to do though... People can see my previous snap stories (memories/whatever the kids are calling them) unless I select 'For My Eyes Only' - that is when they are private to me only

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9yr ago

Jake Mor

Home Workouts by FitnessAI

Maker

@bentossell from the blog post yesterday.. "We realized that Snapchatters want to feel comfortable showing their Memories to friends while they’re hanging out together, so we made it easy to move Snaps and Stories to My Eyes Only — and avoid awkward moments when a friend stumbles upon a Snap meant just for you." You can only see other people's memories on their device- they aren't public. Also in the video they posted, the girl hands her phone over.

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9yr ago

Ben Tossell

Makerpad

@jakemor OHHHH - well thats a weird thing to have!

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9yr ago

Please delete

Anchor

@jakemor we felt the same about Anchor. At first we were super bummed about Snapchat Memories but once we realized there wasn't a discovery element we stopped having a mild heart attack.

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9yr ago

Mikka Luster

For the kind of target demographic I can see using this, a way to share those daily compilations on Facebook/Twitter and/or embedding them (sorry for slash overload) in your own website (think Tumblr, Wordpress, etc.) might go a long way towards adoption. I know from my own experiences, and from looking to the outside of my own walled garden, that as much as "mobile only" appeals to me, things like Instagram took off after there was a way to see those gruesomely squished and compressed filter-abominations on the web. Will there be such a thing in the future? Heck, "post this day on YouTube" alone, or "save this day's video in your camera roll" might go a long way.

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9yr ago

Jake Mor

Home Workouts by FitnessAI

Maker

@legerdemain there absolutly will be. The idea behind trail is to turn everyone into an amateur vlogger- so having many channels of distribution is 🔑. I plan on developing a website to view everyone's trails and a way to share your trails on youtube, facebook and instagram.

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9yr ago

Papertrail logs

Frustration-free log management.

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