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What on Earth is Peach?
1:39
Every few months a new social network crops up hoping to sway us from Facebook and Twitter. This time it’s Peach, the newest app for sharing your life.
Part Facebook, part Path and part Tumblr, the app helps you share parts of your life with friends. It was created by Dom Hofmann, the co-founder of the widely popular video app Vine. Here’s everything you want to know about Peach before you give it a shot.
What is Peach?
First and foremost, Peach is a new social network. It’s like if Facebook and Tumblr had a baby. With Peach, you create a timeline of updates, in chronological order. It’s like a blog, but without all the effort.
A typical Peach profile looks like this: You wake up and type in “good morning” to automatically post the weather and current time. Not wanting to get out of bed, you punch in “GIF” to search for a GIF that expresses your exhaustion.
A typical Peach profile has GIFs, text posts, photos and much more.
James Martin/CNET
Then you compose a note about your morning coffee and add a pic of your witty mug. One of your Peach friends comments that she loves your mug. Before you leave the house, you check your friend’s Peach profile, see she used “here” to show she’s at the gym and give it a Like.
Those text commands (like “good morning” and “here”) are called Magic Words and they help you share information quickly. These shortcuts are the best part of the app by far.
Here’s the full list of Magic Words:
Screenshot by Sarah Mitroff/CNET
Should I join Peach?
Peach is fun, but only if your friends are also using the app. Without friends, the app is barren and there’s nothing to see. Unlike Tumblr or The List App, you can’t see stuff from strangers — only friends and friends of friends. So if your social circle won’t jump on the Peach train, it’s not worth it for you to do so too.
Will it last?
These one-off social networks pop up every few months, luring us away from Facebook and Twitter for a while with promises of a new experience and fun features. But when our core group of friends doesn’t join, we slowly stop checking the apps and eventually delete them. CNET reporter Rich Nieva explains why new apps keep popping up and how Peach fits into the phenomenon.
How do I get this?
Currently Peach is only available for iOS and it’s free. To get started, download the app, pick a username, enter your phone number to find friends and start sharing — it’s that easy.
How is this different from Tumblr?
On the face of it, Peach isn’t all that different from Tumblr, the blogging site that’s been around for years. Both let you share GIFs, photos, video and text. Peach goes a bit farther by helping you share the weather, your current location and drawings.
The biggest difference is that you cannot follow celebrities or strangers on Peach. Instead, you need to be friends with people to see their posts and so they can see yours. Friends of friends can also see your profile, and that’s turned on by default. If you’d prefer, you can lock down your profile for only friends to see. Because of that, Peach is more intimate than Tumblr, where anyone can look at your blog.
So I can ‘poke’ people? Is this Facebook circa 2006?
Yep, sort of. Peach resurrected poking friends, but in its own way. You can wave, boop, quarantine, put a ring on, hiss, wave, blow a kiss, 100 and cake (whatever that means) your friends. It’s just a way to say hey to a friend, without actually saying anything.
Peach’s social commands.
Screenshot by Sarah Mitroff/CNET
What’s missing?
Peach is intentionally different from other social networks, but that doesn’t mean we don’t wish it had similar features. We want to be able to:
- Connect Peach with Facebook or Twitter so you can find friends more easily.
- Use privacy controls to hide posts from particular people.
- Edit posts after the fact.
- Follow people without letting them see what you post.
- Rearrange your friends list so your favorite people appear at the top.
Peach may be the social flavor of the week, but it’s a fun, fresh break from Facebook and Twitter. Whether it lasts or not, Peach and other apps like it push the boundaries of how we connect with friends.
Given that it’s free, you’ve got nothing to lose by giving it a try, other than some space on your home screen. Do you love Peach, or think it’s stupid? Sound off in the comments.
