The Internet Is Going Bonkers For ‘Talkshow’ – A Public Text App Inspired By TSwift

If Twitter and Whatsapp made social-media love and spawned a baby, it would be ‘Talkshow‘ – a new app that has launched today and could best be summarised as a public SMS feed. While new gadgets like this seem to be hitting us every day, it seems the internet is getting around Talkshow in a very big way with tech sites, celebrities and twitter in general going apeshit this morning. So, with that in mind, we thought we’d suck it up and suss it out.

At the moment, the chat app is only available on iOS and will let iPhone users host message-based ‘Talkshows’ about various topics, from sports and politics to TV and music. It works by notifying your followers that you’ve got a live ‘Talkshow’ – that way anyone interested can chime in by sending messages, reaction memes, gifs and even join-up as a co-host. Thus, creating a public realtime forum for banter.

Considering video streaming services like Facebook live and Periscope have made huge traction in 2016, it seems the text based app is an unlikely winner amongst all the clutter. That’s partly due to the fact it’s so damn simple to use. After finding your friends via Facebook, Twitter or your address book, you can quickly discover chat topics. In many ways, it’s basically like a realtime forum that prioritises public discussion based on people you know. It really is pretty nifty.

Via Talkshow

According to Mashable, the founder of the app Michael Sippey said that he got to the idea via Taylor Swift, who shared screenshots of conversations she had with ol’ mate Ed Sheeran. Basically Sippey figured that these personal interactions were pretty cool and were a great way to connect people.

In a blog post he said,

“This little exchange is funny, it’s personal, and even though Tay and Ed are multi-platinum superstars, their conversation is relatable. Why? Because everybody texts! And everybody texts about everything: sports, TV, politics, Beyonce’s Lemonade, Damn Daniel, or what they’re eating for dinner.”

“I wanted to create Talkshow to give people a platform to share these conversations in front of an audience.”

Is it worth the airtime? Well apparently so – but in our eyes it feels like another piece of clutter to the social media junk pile. It’ll be interesting to see how it’s tracking in a couple of months if this thing gets some volume behind it.

Via The Verge