Test-Driving the App: -Adam Ward
There seems to be an app for everything these days, from finding single people, to battling dragons. It is social media apps that probably hold the monopoly on our thumbs though. How many of us have Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook apps? Let us face it, as a nation, we are addicted. So when a chance message from Talehunt came through to my twitter, asking me to review their new app for writers, I naturally shut down my Instagram to jump at the chance. Talehunt is a new app aimed at prose writers. You have two hundred and fifty characters to play with, and in that space you create your story and post it on the feed for others to read. In return you get to read other stories, and follow other writers. The premise is simple; it is the bare bones of any social media app, just with the twist of prose writing. That’s it in a nutshell. The problem is, when you read this summary back, how do you distinguish it from any other social media app? The first thing to note, is that it discards all the glitz of other apps. Talehunt is interested solely in the words and the content. With Instagram, poets can put spurious lines of rhyme, or Narm-tastic thought onto a black and white photo of a refugee looking thoughtfully into the distance, and of course it will reach one hundred likes within minutes. With Talehunt you have a natural green background, and white text. The simplicity itself is rather stylish, and you are not distracted by well-chosen pictures. It is nice to be able to judge the popularity of words in this way. The only issue is actually getting your words seen.
Talehunt seems to rank the stories in order of popularity, therefore as a new used, your first tale will be at the bottom of a pile waiting for someone to see your work. Talehunt also forces you to use a hashtag system by way of titling your piece, although there seems to be no way to search the app using these hashtags. There also seems to be no way to comment on the pieces, or communicate with other Talehunt users, which in some ways defies the point of a social media app. It would be nice to read praise or feedback upon the pieces that we have crafted. But these are minor irritations. All in all, Talehunt is a simple and attractive app that has a lot of potential. The only question is, how should we use it? Whizzbang-blinkandyoumiss-flash fiction has its limitations. It forces writers to try and put too much of a spotlight on a single dimension of their story. Even the most gifted of writers would struggle to carve a piece in such a small space that will live with the reader for longer than a couple of minutes. But still, it is fun to read other people’s words. But, if you were writing a novel, this would be the perfect way to judge which of your darlings you must kill. Furthermore, Talehunt allows you to share on other social media newsfeeds, so if nothing else you get an attractive finish for your words to frame on Instagram. All in all, this app is good. As with anything new, there is room for improvement and upgrading, but let us be fair: this is a brand new app, and it does exactly what it promises. It is free from your Play store, and available on all android and iPhone handsets, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be on your phone, at least for a short time. The creators and owners are also accessible and quick to respond to any query, so if you are interested in what they have planned for the future, they feel quite free to talk about their product. It’s almost as if they are proud of Talehunt. And so they should be.
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