We released Sunlit yesterday and the response has been really great. It’s so amazing to see all the replies on App.net, emails of encouragement, and tweets telling people about the app. I think 1.0 is off to an excellent start. We’ll keep making it better.
I was a little anxious about the release, though. It was a challenging app to build, and it’s different enough from other apps that it’s hard to predict how the market will react. I was also surprised that the same morning we shipped our app, Storehouse was released. This is a beautiful iPad app from Mark Kawano and his new team. The interactions are extremely polished and it’s getting justifiably good praise and lengthy write-ups from Techcrunch and elsewhere.
(Of course, we think Sunlit is pretty awesome too. I’ll be writing more about what makes it special in future blog posts, especially highlighting how it leverages the App.net API, the URL schemes support, and why we use Mapbox.)
At first I was stunned by Storehouse. How could it be that we were both working on a similar idea for the last year, and both apps were finished at the same time? The apps have different UIs, and a different approach, maybe even different goals, but they both create stories, revolve around photos, and publish to the web. I’ve seen a lot of people compare the apps, and I think that’s fair.
To be honest, for a few minutes I was a little bummed out. If I had seen this tweet from Jackson Harper at the time, and not later in the day, I might have been nodding in agreement:
“Having a somewhat similar free app from a funded developer launch the same day as you must be a little disappointing.”
That doesn’t really capture it, though, because I’m also really happy for the Storehouse team. I’ve known Mark for years. I’m confident that his app is going to be one of the most impressive apps on so many people’s iPads.
And they have a full-time team. Jon and I are just two guys, working in our spare time to build something — something we think is new, something for us to use, but also something ambitious in how big it could be.
It seems like a big coincidence that both apps shipped with a similar set of features, but now I realize why it happened. Sure, it’s funny that the release days were identical, and not a few days or weeks apart. But the general timing shouldn’t be at all surprising, because this is an idea whose time has come. There are photo “album”-type apps popping up all over the App Store, such as Cluster, Albumatic, and Heyday, all of which Apple has featured. Plus there are web-based apps like Exposure and Medium, which was recently updated with great photo support as well.
It’s no coincidence; it’s just a good idea. And it’s a huge market: everyone who loves writing and taking photos. That understanding gives me a lot of confidence to double down on our plans for Sunlit 1.1, 1.2, and after. 2014 is going to be an awesome year for sharing stories.
