{"id":351,"date":"2014-03-18T07:59:07","date_gmt":"2014-03-18T15:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/?p=351"},"modified":"2014-03-15T13:02:38","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T21:02:38","slug":"secret-whisper-vs-the-paradox-of-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/18\/secret-whisper-vs-the-paradox-of-choice\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret &#038; Whisper vs. The Paradox of Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>tl;d<\/strong>r: In text apps <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.adobe.com\/jnack\/2014\/01\/instagram-vs-the-paradox-of-choice.html\">just as in photos &amp; video<\/a>, <strong>limiting choice gets more people across the goal line<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Lately I\u2019ve had text-upon-image apps on the brain. <a href=\"http:\/\/adcyoungguns.org\/magazine\/noteography-typographic-app\">Notegraphy<\/a> promises \u201cbeautifully designed writing;\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pictual.net\/\">Pictual<\/a>\u00a0offers to \u201cturn your words into visual statements; and <a href=\"http:\/\/instagram.com\/overgram\">Overgram<\/a>\u00a0can \u201cadd beautiful typography to your Instagram photos.\u201d They&#8217;re all nicely done, but how many people have cared?<\/p>\n<p>Compare that to the highly popular\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.secret.ly\/\">Secret<\/a>\u00a0(current $40M valuation) and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/whisper.sh\/\">Whisper<\/a>\u00a0($24M in funding). Both share captioned images anonymously. Secret only lets you set text (no control over font or positioning), then use a colored background or image. Whisper looks at your text &amp;\u00a0offers matching images, then offers a rudimentary set of fonts &amp; the ability to slide a text block.<\/p>\n<p>In both cases the essence is to\u00a0<strong>make something that you&#8217;ll want to share, without giving you enough creative options that you&#8217;ll get lost en route to doing so<\/strong>. You can\u2019t go too far wrong or be judged for not getting the look \u201cright.&#8221; Immediacy whomps visual control. It&#8217;s Instagram all over again.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, speaking of fun text\/image projects, Nathan Ripperger\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/happyplace.someecards.com\/29695\/dad-makes-art-out-of-weird-things-he-finds-himself-saying-to-his-kids\">makes fun art from the weird things his kids say<\/a>. To help parents do something similar, JibJab has released <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/app\/kidquoter\/id605535334?mt=8\">Kid Quoter<\/a>, but I haven\u2019t seen it take off. See also Linzie Hunter\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brainpickings.org\/index.php\/2010\/05\/28\/spam-as-art-top-3\/\">Spam One-Liners<\/a>, &#8220;a gorgeous, colorful set of hand-lettering based on spam email subject lines in Linzie\u2019s inbox.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>tl;dr: In text apps just as in photos &amp; video, limiting choice gets more people across the goal line. Lately I\u2019ve had text-upon-image apps on the brain. Notegraphy promises \u201cbeautifully designed writing;\u201d Pictual\u00a0offers to \u201cturn your words into visual statements; and Overgram\u00a0can \u201cadd beautiful typography to your Instagram photos.\u201d They&#8217;re all nicely done, but how [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":354,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions\/354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}