Picpal is an Android app that aims to bring a little more liveliness to the act of sharing selfies with your Facebook friends. The idea is simple, you take a Selfie and leave some room for your friends, you invite them and they have up to 24 hours to add their Selfie to your collage. These collages feature live chat, so friends and family can spark up a conversation about what they’re doing at the moment. Users can then update their selfies to reflect where they are at the moment, if they’ve landed on holiday or if they’ve left the office and hit the bar for instance. The end result is a collage of friends all over the world doing different things, yet together all the same, giving you a photo to save for later. Fun and simple to use, without the need to sign up your friends to a whole new service, Picpal can help bring together friends from all over the world in one place. So, let’s take a closer look, shall we?
First thing’s first, users will need to download Picpal from the Play Store to get started. After that, they’ll need to sign in with their Facebook account.
This is something that a lot of people haven’t been taking kindly to, the fact that you have to use Facebook to log in. I have to say as someone that uses Google+ more, it’s not ideal, but I count more of my “IRL” friends on Facebook, so I guess this isn’t too bad. I was however, sadly the first person out of my friends to use Picpal:
Inviting friends however, is nice and simple and can be done either through Facebook or through WhatsApp, which covers the majority of your friends and family.
What’s nice was that Picpal allows users to experience the app first before they invite friends, which allows them to get a taste of what the app has to offer.
To me, Picpal seems like a sort of blend of Snapchat, the humble postcard and Instagram. When used properly, I can see this being a great experience for extroverts and those looking to share their experiences with people out there. For instance, you might like to share your holiday with people back home, which is perhaps more fun for one person, but good-natured nonetheless.
As you can see, Picpal can be a fun way of starting a conversation, a picture says a lot more than a handful of messages, so Picpal can be used to kickstart a conversation around a common theme pretty easily.
Picpal is also great for sharing a big occasion with all of your friends, no matter where they are, like the fourth of July, for instance.
With different filters as well as Adobe’s photo editor built-in, users can easily perfect their selfie before sharing it with their friends.
Friends have 24 hours to add in their selfies, but after that it doesn’t become an entirely fixed collage, and you can easily change your selfie whenever you like, to keep a collage and chat fresh.
Picpal is an app that I’ve sure a lot of people out there will find a lot of fun, but it’s not perfect. For instance, there’s no other way to sign in other than Facebook, which is what it is. The overall concept is pretty nice though, and it’s a sort of modern reimagining of the “Wish you were here” concept, connecting people with messages and pictures no matter where they are in the world. Facebook is of course, one of the predominant social networks connecting people together all over the world, so it does make sense to use something like this for Picpal and inviting new friends to the app is pretty simple overall. More than just sharing selfies with each other, Picpal is a great way for setting the mood of a conversation, and it’s just a fun and simple way of bringing people together no matter where they are.
Ratings
- Speed (4/5) – Picpal runs nice and quickly no matter the hardware that you’re running, making it easy to pickup and get started.
- Features (4/5) – While the Facebook reliance sort of limits the app for some users, this is a fun concept and one that blends elements from other apps and experience from the past altogether.
- Theme (4/5) – With a good-looking Android app that’s easy to use and understand, Picpal looks the part.
- Overall (4/5) – Perhaps not for everyone, Picpal has a lot going for it, especially for those that enjoy sharing their experiences with their friends and family no matter where they might be.
Pros
- Great way of sharing pictures with people no matter where they are, while also joining in the fun from other people, instead of just ogling at other’s images on Instagram or Facebook.
- lets people share a moment or occasion no matter where they might be around the world for something like a birth, a christening, New Year’s Eve or something similar.
- Offers users the ability to edit and tweak their photo with realistic adjustments, rather than just fake-looking filters.
- Users can change their selfie whenever they like, which makes it fun to keep updating things when something changes or you head to a new place.
Cons
- Only allows users to log in with Facebook, and only those with Facebook can join a collage.
- Instagram sign in would be nice and helpful.
All-in-all, Picpal is a great little app that can help people start conversations, join in the fun no matter where they are in the world and just share important things in their life. It’s a little disappointing that there’s nothing besides Facebook sign-in, but that’s not too much of a problem, realistically. An excellent blend of Instagram, Snapchat and the classic postcard, this has a lot going for it, and it’s great for people on different time zones and friend groups scattered all over the world.