Sunslider v1.1: Videos! On the internet!

First, apologies for the lack of updates in August: one of the goals at Sunslider is to continuously improve with rapid iterations, and that was… difficult… given the European summer calendar.

But we’re back ☀️ And there are some big improvements now available in Sunslider v1.1:

• As you might have guessed from the title, Sunslider now supports videos, whether taken through the in-app camera or by uploading via your photo library. The one particularity is that Sunslider videos can only be a maximum of 23 seconds. Why 23 seconds?
  • 23 seconds is just about the amount of time it takes to sing “Happy Birthday” twice; it’s also long enough to see 1 successful bull ride and 2 unsuccessful ones!
  • 23 seconds is long enough for a sweet message, and short enough to make sure people don’t get bored.
  • By the way, do you know how long 23 seconds really is? Try “The 23-second challenge” and find out.
• Forgot your password? No need to text me anymore 😉 Just click the “Forgot password?” feature on the sign-in page, put in the email address linked to your account, and you’ll receive an email with a temporary password. Then when you log in, you’ll be automatically sent to a screen that lets you select and confirm your new password.
• Much improved commenting abilities, to let you have longer conversations under a given slide, and easily follow along with those conversations visually. 
• Bug fixes: no more empty profile pics, better image processing to help multi-photo carousels upload quickly, and more.

All of this goes into an app that is now, dare I say it, quite stable thanks to all of you early adopters who helped us figure out what was working, the (many) things that weren’t, and how to improve. A huge thank you to everyone who has been testing, sending messages and suggestions, and exercising patience as we worked through various issues.

Next up on the roadmap: an Android version, for all of our non-Apple friends. It's 2025, we've all got a few, no big deal.

Bugs 🪲

One of the best things about actually launching a product is that you begin to feel both better and worse about its problems. Worse, because you can see why certain things should have been there from the start (like the “Forgot password” function), but also better because you start to have a different perspective on the problems in products coming from other… bigger… companies:

So please, let me know about any bugs you encounter with the new update: I promise that I’ll still feel bad about them and they will get fixed; I just won’t feel quite as bad about them as the folks at Google should about pushing often-wrong, never-doubting AI down everyone’s throats.

Spread the word 🎤

I had someone recently say, “I like it, but I don’t know how to tell my friends to use it - everybody’s so addicted to the Instagram algorithm.” And know what? I get it. After all, they literally designed that algorithm to grab your attention and never let go.

Luckily, in these first few weeks of having Sunslider live, I realized something that wasn’t necessarily clear to me before: growing Sunslider doesn’t require us to convince people to straight up stop using Instagram. Instead, there are two key things to remember about Sunslider:

• We’re focusing on something Instagram gave up on: sharing real moments with real friends and family (imagine, a social network for people you actually socialize with!);
• We don’t want to hold you captive in Sunslider for hours: get on once a day, spend 5-10 minutes catching up with friends, and then go back to your real, normal life.

Obviously there are a lot of other arguments that can be used: privacy protections, #madeinEurope, no data tracking, etc. But all of that comes back to our simple focus on privileging real social bonds over building an influencer network.

So let’s start speeding things up: send Sunslider to 3 people you actually know and like, and tell them to check out what a social network built for normal people can be.

🥐 PS: Pour l'instant, ce newsletter va être que en anglais; je vais voir comment je peux faire pour créer des catégories et l'envoyer dans ta langue préférée. C'est sur la liste, promis 🙏

🫒 PD: Por ahora, este newsletter va a ser solo en inglés; voy a ver cómo puedo hacer para crear categorías y enviarlo en tu idioma preferido. Está en la lista, prometido 🙏

🍋 PS. Per il momento, questa newsletter sarà solamente in inglese; devo vedere come fare per creare delle categorie e inviarla nella tua lingua preferita. È sulla lista, promesso 🙏