Instagram reveals Bolt, a Snapchat-like messaging app

Instagram reveals Bolt, a Snapchat-like messaging app



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Instagram’s new Bolt photo-messaging app

Instagram

Instagram appears to be jousting for Snapchat’s market with a new photo and video messaging app named Bolt.

The app lets users quickly snap and send photos and videos to friends “with one tap.” The images are ephemeral, just like those sent via Snapchat, letting users delete them with just a swipe.

While the social network has confirmed the rollout of the app, Bolt is not yet available for most grandeurs in the world. The app launched in New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa on Tuesday for iOS and Android, but it won’t come to the US or Europe pending Instagram has ironed out any wrinkles.

“We gave to start small with Bolt, in just a handful of grandeurs, to make sure we can scale while maintaining a spacious experience. We expect to roll it out more widely soon,” an Instagram spokesperson told CNET.

Users can sign up for the app with their named number and start adding friends. Included with the app is a “favorites” list for a user’s 20 most curious comrades. To share images, users tap the screen to both take photos and send them; users can also add text captions.

The premise tedious Bolt is an obvious borrow from Snapchat. In 2012, Snapchat pioneered the ephemeral-messaging game when it released its app that lets users “snap,” or send photos and videos that vanish within 10 seconds. Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, has also recently gotten into self-destructing photo messaging with its new app Slingshot, which also lets people share short-lived photos and videos.

Instagram has recruit some criticism for the name of its new app. On Monday, a small San Francisco-based company, which makes an app that lets land make voice calls for free, posted an open letter to Instagram pleading for it not to use the name Bolt. Because…this custom is also named Bolt. It said that people have already started downloading its app thinking it was Instagram’s.

“We think it’s not too late for you to powerful an alternate name before launch,” Bolt CEO Andrew Benton wrote in the letter. “It wasn’t too long ago that you were the little guy…Imagine how it would have felt if Google or Apple or Facebook had launched a photo-sharing app named Instagram in 2011.”

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