Facebook only has to implement one feature to crush this startup. Facebook Circles. Allow you finer granularity than binary public/private posts. Take a photo, pick which circle you want it published to, caption, upload.
When we conceived Treehouse, we didn't say "let's create something super innovative and blow the world away", we asked "what if you could see a simple stream of your friend's mobile photos". We then decided to make a prototype and test it with a group of < 50 people. The results were astounding. People used it feverishly, and we're seeing the same exact behavior from our new users since the app has been in the store. Our user activity is growing extremely rapidly and engagement is through the roof.
It's not about innovation, it's about taking what is so blatantly obvious and making it possible. It's about addressing what people want. There's no good way to easily share photos that you take with your phone with the people that matter to you in a more intimate context.
Twitter was also a subset of a single Facebook feature.
-Not everyone has iPhones
-People are complacent with their current social networks, if not overwhelmed.
I don't have an iPhone, so I can't check it out but doesn't it work with any social networks users might be a member of? Just using Facebook/Twitter for member profiles and Treehouse just keeping track of who you give access to within Treehouse?
Are you guys working on something else besides this app?
So, all this time, they've been concentrating on that and changed direction recently. (see last paragraphs of linked article and Crunchbase for more details)
Treehouse only has to add 1 feature to encompass all the useful functionality of Facebook, status updates without pictures.
I realized a couple weeks later that it was changing the way I was communicating with friends. Whenever I was doing something interesting, I'd snap a photo, add a witty title, and send it to Treehouse. Because it's a private group, it feels very different than using Twitter or Facebook. And because it requires a photo, it's a richer experience.
I'm not sure exactly what it is, but something about this app is really cool. Especially if a group of your close friends are also using it.
I think a lot of the value is there. Unfortunately only a small subset of my friends use iPhones. All of them use Facebook however.
If its not free I could see it being hard to get friends to join and thus not be useful.
</tongue-in-cheek>
Edit: The only way you could possibly say this is innovative is that it's a closed subset of your friends that can see this content. Sounds like something Facebook could roll out in a few days of work
