▲ ▼ Small social bits like memes aren't interactive
Missing a simple way to create small interactive experiences
The range of small content creation on mobile encompasses single photos, customising gifs and composing entire movies. There are no options for users who want to make interactive experiences.Workarounds
Two common ways for users to create an interactive experience are building a website or a game. There are a few website builders that run on mobile (eg: Universe) but these are still deployed via web, not providing content you can deliver directly.
Historical Technology
Two generations of technology have allowed end users to easily create experiences. These pre-date the rise of mobile devices. Both created a document which could be played on a commonly-available runtime. The Hypercard environment was bundled with Mac computers for several years (pre-Web).
Sir, but isn't the non-interactive nature i.e the simplicity of being able to convey deeper meaning with a static image the core philosophy of a meme?
Hence even the cave man paintings are technically considered a meme.
I wonder whether making a meme interactive would make it cease to exist as a meme Or whether an interactive meme would add additional depth to the memes like depending upon the reader action the meaning could change.
Occasionally I see people are using reddit's gallery feature to construct a meme with multiple images where the reader is required to slide each image, So some basic level of interactive memes do seem to exist.
Thanks for letting me know about people using the gallery feature like that - it's the kind of story that we remember!
The creative way people use very simple features to build new experiences is the kind of "aha" moment I want to make possible with Touchgram - https://www.touchgram.com/ .
I'm not (just) targeting memes. It's a convenient example of the many popular things people consume which are almost-always static experiences - you sit and watch something, rather than being able to interact with it.
"since Touchgram functions inside iMessage, It probably doesn't suffer from chicken-and-egg issues of larynx"
Exactly!
I was originally working on a cross-platform version using a similar game engine (Cocos2D-X in C++, rather than Apple's SpriteKit in Swift). A mentor advised me in 2018 to try to get it working either inside Facebook Messenger or Apple iMessage. The only platform with a rich enough API is iMessage. Apple take care of the notification side, because Touchgrams arrive like any other message. They also provide streamlined installation - if you don't have Touchgram installed and I send you one, Aple put the install link right there in the message bubble.
One of the things that informed my attitude to building "on top" of platforms, especially if you're trying to add extended capabilities, was https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/a-story-of-gamelayers-inc-
which was also turned into a book https://www.amazon.com/Story-GameLayers-inside-internet-startup-ebook/dp/B005PDH410
It's true that developing apps within someone else's ecosystem can aid addressing the chicken-and-egg issues through discovery mechanisms offered through that ecosystem.
Great points about platform reliance and these are why I decided Messenger was too dangerous (and limited) for us to use.
Apple's approach with iMessage app extensions is very different - they run as a kind of pure native app, which is called to take control over 95% of the screen for user interaction and then hands back a bundle of data for the message. So Apple preserve user privacy but we aren't running in a weird non-native environment. Much of Touchgram's core logic runs on Mac also and changing it to be "just" a normal iOS app would be very straightforward. We have an in-house testbed app which is just a standard app. Most of the work would just be adding notification support and a bit of UI to replace what iMessage gives us.
All the other extension mechanisms for different messaging platforms that I've evaluated do so via some kind of cut-down HTML running under control of the messenger app. That's much more limiting and vulnerable.
You also make a very good point about monetisation control - Apple don't impose any special restrictions on apps inside iMessage - we have similar subscription and marketplace plans to many apps. I've not reviewed FB Messenger's restrictions for a couple of years but unsurprised.