Instagram wanted some of Snapchat’s action, so it created a clone called Bolt which is finally available in the Australian iTunes and Google Play app stores from today.
Instagram has launched its Snapchat clone “Bolt” in Australia at last, after earlier soft-launching in the New Zealand, South African and Singaporean app markets first.
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| One tap is all it takes to send a photo or video you hopefully won’t regret sending. |
One tap is all it takes to send a photo or record a video, with the image or video being sent to your chosen contact as soon as your finger is lifted from the screen.
As with Snapchat, the images or photos delete themselves after you’ve viewed them, but it is always possible to take a screenshot or just use another device with camera to photograph or video record something that’s supposed to be private, so just like Snapchat, you do need to be careful about what you to send to whom!
Unlike Instagram’s filters, Bolt’s photos and videos are “always unedited so people can see the world as you do”.
You can easily caption photos and videos, go back and forth by replying to your friends with text, photos or videos, organise your 20 “Favourites” in whatever order works for you, and sign up with your phone number, with no email address needed.
Billed as “insanely simple, wicked fast photo messaging”, the description even cheekily asks whether the speed with which you can share photos and video is “maybe too fast?”.
Instagram is the company that popularised taking photos and turning them into digital square Polaroid-style photos complete with endless fancy filters to give your snaps a better look.
It’s also famous for being snapped by Facebook for one billion dollars, with Facebook then trying to snap up the secretive Snapchat for three billion dollars late last year, but finding its astoundingly generous offer rejected.
Now that Facebook has Instagram’s Bolt under its belt, it is likely very pleased it didn’t need to waste $3 Billion dollars on an app it has easily re-created, although it wasn’t the app as such that Facebook would have wanted, but all of Snapchat’s users.
As noted with all of these programs, the promises of deletion do not guarantee that others still can’t make copies of whatever you send.
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| What Bolt looks like on Android. |
So, if you choose to send a photo or video your grandmother would be shocked to see, it might be wiser to simply bolt away from these kinds of apps as fast as you can lest your grandmother ever ends up seeing something that cannot be unseen – if you know what we mean.
Happy snapping!
