Feecha is a mobile app, developed by The Chingchong Group, that mixes location, microblogging, and cute creatures into an app.
Instead of seeing a stream of endless chatting and link shares, Feecha users will see status updates from their friends on a map. For updating statuses, Feecha allows pics, video, and links. Every update is also tied to a location.
For example, if I made a comment on China, I can move my update and stick it to China on the map. I can also bitch about a restaurant and stick my update on street where it is located. Each eye stands for an update. So the more eyes there are, the bigger the monster grows which also means there are more comments on that location. Clicking on it will let you view all the updates in a neat stream.
Because of its LBS nature, I believe most users will use Feecha as a review app for local restaurants and cafes. But then again, there’s no way to pinpoint exact location to throw our reviews. It’s hard to see why people should talk about themselves or chat with friends on a map (it just feels stupid).
For that, babbling and chatting on Twitter without the pressure to tag a location is way better. Sharing links and videos on Feecha is also against our common day-to-day practice. For example, if I wanna share this Ogilvy China video on Feecha, which location should I tag? In China? But my friends from Singapore or Japan wouldn’t be able to see or share it.
Even so, I must say that Feecha has a beautiful interface and I’m having fun exploring it. Kudos to the team for thinking out of the box.
But I do have doubts about its purpose. Is it built for local reviews (like Dianping, Yelp)? A social network (like Facebook)? Or is it a place for people to learn about news through friends (Twitter, Sina Weibo)?
I’m a little confused, so let’s call it an LBS microblog for now. Or perhaps I’m not using Feecha right. Give it a try (iTunes link) and let me know what you think.
Hi Willis, thank you for trying feecha and for your article — this is Jeff, co-founder of The Ching Chong Group. I wanted to quickly address the part that you felt was stupid.
We expect most of our users to plant their feecha where they are located. I.e., if they are walking down Arab Street and saw something cool happening there, they would create a feecha for that location (feecha will automatically detect the GPS coordinates of the comment, photo or video – you can post then and there, or later). When they do, others nearby Haji Lane will get a notice and they can then decide if it’s something they’d like to act on.
It’s a pretty cool feeling to be an area where a lot of feechas are being planted — it gives you a sense of being part of a *physical* community that Twitter does not provide. The common denominator is not necessarily who you’re friends with, but who you share the location with.
Please check out these two articles which we feel capture the essence of feecha:
- Yahoo!, http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsg.news.yahoo.com%2Fmade-in-singapore-app-takes-aim-at-twitter.html&h=TAQHa9v-jAQHtaGPUTuD6NQ7kyn7nSjTVXpTXuhRNm0dEww
- Tech Bytes for Tea, http://tech4tea.com/blog/2011/11/16/new-iphone-app-feecha/
If you’d like to meet to talk about feecha in more detail, I’d be happy to. Drop me a line at contact @ thechingchonggroup.com
Hi Jeff. Thanks for the comment.
Sorry but I don’t share your view on the community thingy. And on location, why not just stick to the users’ current location? Why bother asking users to choose?Both articles write good about Feecha which of course you would like it.
I’m just writing what i felt about that app after using it. And more startups need truth rather than “hurrays and cheer leaders.” And that’s just my opinion about your app. You can choose to ignore it.
It has a cool interface but i will not use because it ain’t helping me in anyway. Foursquare can perhaps do a better job for location social networking. And one more thing which i forgot to mention — Feechat loads a little slow even on wifi.
my $0.02
Hi Willis, thanks again for the comment. We are not asking for hurrays and cheerleaders, though of course I’d love that if truthful
. Simply trying to answer the questions you posed in your article which amount to, “What’s feecha for?” I like the articles I linked to because they understood the purpose behind feecha, but of course they also took the time to talk to me about feecha in detail in order to write their story.
Given it’s not realistic to expect everyone to talk to me in order to understand feecha, what your article and comment suggest is that there’s an education issue — we have to be better at communicating to users through the app what feecha does. Not just you specifically, but to any general user who tries our app for the first time. That’s my big takeaway here.
Your point about not giving users the option to choose their feecha’s location is a great one, and it’s one that we debated internally. The reason we put it in is to 1) improve accuracy since GPS isn’t that accurate if not on WIFI, and 2) to account for photos and videos uploaded from cameras that don’t capture location data such as your everyday SLR. However, if providing this option causes a lot of confusion than it may be better to remove it. In fact, I think we will, so as you can see, your honest article is already helpful.
Some of the app’s services got a little overloaded over a few days with the explosion in content this past week, but we’ve since fixed those issues (I think!). Should be back to speedy now.
cool. thanks for the comment and glad that it helped. let’s connect. send me an email at willis[at]penn-olson.com
looking forward