In order to stand out from the crowd in the world of social network platforms, Livehouse Limited’s mobile app LiveIn has been rethinking what users want from the tools that keep them connected. With a concept that feels like the love-child of Snapchat and TikTok, the LiveIn app lets users send image-based content directly to their contacts’ home screens through the downloaded LiveIn widget. This format allows users to connect visually in near-real time, since the content is sent and consumed almost simultaneously to a specific user.
Rather than posting content for all of their followers to consume or privately messaging individual users, this no-effort delivery of content has made social network feel a lot smaller and a lot more closer-knit. The idea behind the LiveIn widget means users may not build networks of tens of thousands of followers, but that’s a feature, not a bug. Instead, the end game is to foster stronger relationships with the smaller number of contacts you really want to connect with.
Consider this: if your entire Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok follower count had the ability to send photos directly to your home screen at all hours of the day, your phone would essentially be useless. Instead, the LiveIn widget means the people you care about most can instantly update you on what they’re up to.
More importantly, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have become social media for broadcasting to many, not social networks for friends, which in fact makes people reluctant to share the intimate side of their life to their close friends on these platforms. Now, with LiveIn, your social network headspace becomes less cluttered with ads, news, and strangers’ content, but more personal and meaningful.
Think of it this way: if your entire Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter follower count had the ability to send photos directly to your home screen at all hours of the day, your phone would essentially be useless. Instead, the LiveIn widget means the people you care about most can instantly update you on what they’re up to. Now, your social network headspace becomes less cluttered with ads, news, and strangers’ content, but more personal and meaningful.
Of course, what’s the point of social network without the broader messaging and reach? That’s why the LiveIn app has integration directly to TikTok and other platforms, allowing users to create content for more than just their personal contacts to enjoy. The in-app ability to create and share memory slideshows of your previous posts—reminiscent of Facebook Memories or TimeHop—provides you with a quick look back at some of your friends’ and family’s most special events.
So while LiveIn has been busy reinventing the social network wheel, it’s important to wonder if this is actually what users want from their connectivity. The answer seems to be a resounding “yes.”
Now a global phenomenon that has topped the mobile app marketplaces since its launch in February 2022, LiveIn downloads skyrocketed in April of this year. This success was largely due to viral videos of the LiveIn widget in action that were shared on TikTok, sparking more than 40 million views under two distinct hashtags. Of course, LiveIn reviews have been pretty favorable, which has helped increase its visibility and traffic.
It’s like Snapchat in its early stage. Snapchat started as a photo-sharing app for users to interact with their close friends with its famous “burn after reading” feature, and has become one of the most popular social apps among US young people. LiveIn, also targeting users’ best friends but with a different approach – sending pictures to their home screens, may well follow Snapchat’s path to success.
There are some other major benefits to the LiveIn widget. By helping to cement those personal relationships, there’s already been a widespread adoption among younger users (see TikTok above). This stands to reshape what today’s digital natives know about social network. A generation that hadn’t touched a mobile device before Facebook was unleashed on the world has never known a social network experience that didn’t involve intense overloads of uncurated content. The LiveIn app stands to change that dynamic by turning off the rest of the world for a while and allowing users to experience only the “best friends” aspect of social media.
In short, the buzz words that come to mind here are things like “less is more” and “quality, not quantity.” By cutting out the noise, the LiveIn app may very well have given social network the rebirth it needs to actually be social again. It’s positioning as one of the highest-ranking apps in its market shows that its users are ready to rethink social, too.
