Photos are visual snapshots of a particular time and place; videos capture much more by recording the movements, the sounds, the smiles. Most people are happy to pick one or the other, so why add audio to photos?
It seems odd when you write the idea out but the Picment app – which records a few seconds of sound at the moment a photo is taken – really works rather well in practice. For example, check it out for yourselves here, here and here. There’s something about it that captures the emotion and atmosphere of a single moment in time.
So it’s a cute little app. But does it have a big future? For one, there are plenty of alternatives – Shuttersong and FxCamera, for example, also allow sound to be embedded into an image. But Picment co-founder Saied Tehrani is adamant the platform can thrive by streamlining the image and audio capturing process.
By simultaneously taking the photo whilst capturing the background sound with just one input from the user, Tehrani said, additional steps that are included in other apps – which record sound separately and then embed it later – have been cut out making Picment quicker and more spontaneous.
Then there is a focus on photo sharing. The Picment team’s research suggested that, particularly in Germany, most people preferred to share images privately with friends rather than posting them on a public forum – the same idea which was behind the now-deceased 7Moments.
‘People Deeply Care About Their Privacy’
WhatsApp is now the most popular platform for sharing privately, and Tehrani added: “WhatsApp users send privately more than 500 million photos every day. Snapchat has become so popular because it even destroys the photos you share after several seconds. All of that shows that people deeply care about their privacy, even though Facebook and other services claim the opposite.”
But Picment’s sharing features also boast an additional public layer allowing users to share via social networks, and while doing so by Facebook is currently managed by the ungainly method of sending a link, work is underway to improve that.
And the team understands that they need to stay on their toes to achieve growth, with new features set to be added. Image filters, a standard photo app features, are already present, while sound filters will appear soon and the gallery is also being improved.
Also important is a promised release for the Android app on iOS. But can it really persuade users to choose the third option behind photos and video? Tehrani said: “With Picment you can preserve the intensity of looking at photos, but you can enrich that experience with the acoustic atmosphere of the moment the photos has been captured. So the whole experience gets even more intense.”
The potential usecases for Picment which he puts forward include digital postcards – take a photo of the beach and send it to your jealous friends with the sound the sea lapping against the shore, for example – as well as asking questions and sharing info very fast, such as asking your girlfriend if she likes a pair of shoes you found in a shop.
The app is currently free, with future monetisation possibilities including target advertising, in-app purchases of items such as extra filters, and a freemium model including a paid-for premium version.