Shootlr : Let me take a someone-elsie 

We’re flooded with selfies in our daily lives, and with apps like Snapchat the selfie game has become pretty strong but it doesn’t end there. 

If selfies are photos of you taken by you. What do you call a photo taken by your friends, using your own phone? This new app wants to call it a someone-elsie. 

Introducing Shootlr, an app attempting to take this brave new frontier of photography to the masses: an app that enables you to make your friends to take a selfie for you, from the comfort of your smartphone. The Shootlr app requests you to take a selfie when one of your friends asks for one. 

If you’re still confused, this is how it works. 

You remember that it’s been a while since you’ve seen a photo of your friend Shaista, and you send a photo request to her. A notification buzzes on Shaista’s phone; when she opens the app, a timer immediately starts its three-second countdown. At the end of the countdown it snaps her photo, then shares it with you. And, of course, you can probably expect a Shootlr request in return. 

All that is fancy, but the real question is whether or not this can become the next Instagram or Snapchat… 

This app could be the next big thing — sharing selfies among closest friends is a really good pitch, but could the applications concept be too confined? 

“Is the timing of the Shootlr request inconvenient?” says Onno Spek, founder of Shootlr, touching on my main doubt about the app. “Just dismiss the notification.” 

The fact that the photo request could be declined sorts major privacy issues, but a platform that allows other people to make you take selfies of yourself is, well, a bit creepy, and not to mention the chaos this app could get in within the sexting community. 

I guess the app can be seen as a curious hybrid between taking selfies when you feel like it and replying with a photo whenever someone asks you for one on Snapchat. Nifty? I suppose, but I’m really not sure what the problem is that the company is trying to solve. 

Shootlr is now available on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, try it for yourself, and stay safe. 

By Zeeshan Akram Jabeer