Selfie is an app for starting video conversations

When they hear the word selfie, some people will groan and others will cheer. It’s one of those words that can become ingrained in our society in recent times. Selfie is surprising to say the least, because it’s not focussed on snapping pictures of yourself on your phone — it’s actually a social network that has nothing to do with photography.

It’s an iPhone app that’s designed to let people record 24-second videos of themselves talking about whatever they feel like at the time, and replaying to other people using the same method. So why the name? Apparently it stems from the app’s founder offering to take a picture of two women in a bar in New York, only to be rebuffed because “it’s a selfie”. THus, the brand name was born.

It quickly gained the attention of journalists, despite many of them not having a clue what Selfie actually was. The air of mystery was around the site, and while many selfie haters were no-doubt worried, the site has nothing to do with the photography trend.

But now we know what it is, and it’s basically to video blogging as Twitter is to regular blogging. It’s micro-vlogging if you will. It’s not the first time this has been done, and I’m sure it won’t be the last, but let’s just see how it goes from here.

Tom Pritchard