With its second app, Amo wants to make sharing photos as simple as taking a photo

Less than three Weeks ago, French startup Amo launched ID. As hinted in my article covering this highly anticipated launch, ID was Amo’s first idea. Today, the social consumer startup is releasing its second app, called I catch.

Once again, this new app will be analyzed by social app enthusiasts and other companies working in this space because Amo was co-founded by 10 industry veterans who cut their teeth at Zenly, the location-sharing app that was acquired by Snap. it became one of Europe’s biggest social networking apps with 18 million daily active users and was then shut down by Snap.

Amo’s first app ID is all about creating (and browsing) highly personalized profile pages. It’s a visual take on social media with a sense of depth and space that doesn’t limit you to a 3×3 photo grid. Conception is something entirely different.

“It’s the thing I think about the most in the last 12 years of my life. Everyone makes photo apps and I use other photo apps every day. Why can’t I make one myself? How would I do that?’ Amo co-founder Antoine Martin told me a few weeks ago.

Capture is a radically different photo sharing app. As the name suggests, calling it a photo sharing app isn’t even fair, as Amo spent more time thinking about taking photos than looking at other people’s photos. It’s a fun and simple smartphone camera capture that takes advantage of many of your phone’s sensors.

When you open the app, Download starts immediately with a viewfinder of your camera. There’s a big shutter button in the middle and some smaller icons next to it.

Capture is a camera app — and it’s social. It’s meant to be used as a way to take photos in seconds, without having to think about it, just like you take photos with the iPhone’s default camera app.

When you take a picture, nothing happens. There is no preview screen, no action buttons, nothing.

“Consumption takes a back seat, you don’t land on power. It’s a build-first app and that’s really what it’s all about,” Martin said. “If I walk down the street and see a space invader which I like, I just capture it, I’m there, I take a picture, I turn off my phone, it’s in my pocket. I don’t spend minutes looking at the preview.”

In the background, the photos you take with Capture are saved to your photo library and shared with your Amo friends. You don’t have to think about what to share or not to share and who to share your photos with. Every photo you take with Capture is shared.

A personal camera

A piece of content in Capture isn’t just a photo. By default, when you press the big shutter button, Capture saves two photos — the one you see in the viewfinder and a wide-angle photo.

There are smaller buttons in the app that are essentially other photo functions. The smiley face lets you take a front—what you see—and a selfie. The third button is a hyperzoom function that captures a handful of photos that zoom in and out.

These features allow you to enhance your photos with the environment. They could also be seen as artistic tools or opportunities for fun.

But when you look at your friends’ photos, you only see one photo and that’s it. This time, Capture takes advantage of the accelerometer to turn a still photo into a moving image. Tilt your phone forward and back to reveal wide-angle, selfie or zoom photos.

Just like with ID, Amo has built in a ton of haptic effects so you can really feel the app as it vibrates slightly in your hand when you tilt your phone back and forth. It’s an imaginative gesture of interaction and it works brilliantly.

One thing I’ve noticed when people start talking about Capture is that they say “take my phone” because it’s easier to explain the app when the other person can move the device around in their hand.

Here’s a video that explains what I mean (tactile feedback not included):

Now, what about filters? These things are popular on other social apps, right? Amo does allow you to customize your camera, but the company doesn’t call it filters.

When you swipe left on the main screen, you have several options. There is a menu that allows you to adjust the color temperature and general feel of your photos. You pick a color and then push a bunch of buttons until you’re happy with the result. Amo does not label these buttons or provide any explanation. It’s all about finding your style without any influence.

“There’s a button to paint and a button to drop stickers. And the goal here is to be able to make your own signature,” Martin said. Once you hit the save button, all your future photos will be saved with these adjustments. “We’ve tried to be more personal than others, letting you really define a style of your own and keep it that way,” he added.

And Capture has more depth than you might imagine. There are some hidden tricks that users will discover over time. For example, you can switch to a different subject by holding your palm in front of the selfie camera for a few seconds.

This way, you can save multiple camera styles without deleting your previous style. You can also move the app buttons in case you want to put them in the corner or want to make the front button bigger.

A social camera roll

At the bottom of the app, there’s a banner that lets you know if your friends have shared new photos. When you tap it, it opens a feed of the latest photos. You can add comments and see where the photo was taken.

Going through these photos is like browsing a shared camera with your friends. Arguably, it’s something messaging apps like WhatsApp have nailed with group chats. But the content in Capture is less sophisticated, more simple. It reflects what your friends are doing every day.

Well, Amo is a startup building a galaxy of social apps. ID and Capture are the first two applications. There may be more apps on the way.

And it can be a powerful approach when it comes to user development. When you create a profile and add friends in one app, you’ll find your friends in Amo’s other apps. You can see notifications from ID in Capture and vice versa.

It is a new approach to the social consumer space. Amo doesn’t just try different things, it creates radically different social apps, ties them together into a unified experience, and puts them on your phone’s home screen — one icon at a time.

The other common thread is that Amo wants to focus on real friends and loved ones. And so it is with Capture.

“When users go into consumption mode, they have a meter of content to consume. They know they need three to four seconds at most per piece of content,” Martin said. “So users don’t get caught up in the infinite flow of TikTok, where you risk getting bogged down in three hours of stuff.”

And when you dismiss the last photo, the app closes itself. It means it’s time to go back to real life, explore and take interesting pictures for your friends.