TapSTaCk
Rethinking social media for more
meaningful digital interactions
To differentiate, sometimes you gotta be brave and change just about everything to stand out. That was the work with a company that I first met as Taptalk.
The team approached me during a moment of transition. Fresh from a successful round of funding from top-tier investors, they knew they lived in the shadow of Snapchat and were looking to tell a different kind of story about what was possible at the axis of messaging & social media. They were also facing a legal issue that necessitated a name change, and wanted my help with both.
One of the core features of Taptalk was that people could send one-tap photos & videos that disappeared after being viewed to 12 of their closest friends. This ephemerality was a feature integral to their product, but it was also what kept them well-within Snapchat’s shadow. It seemed clear to me that shifting to the exact opposite model was both an opportunity for much-needed differentiation and the chance to offer a more meaningful user experience to an older, more sentimental audience.
I made the case for a radical re-imagining of the product, and, ultimately, the team agreed. Together, we built a new flow so that every message sent and received would be archived into an ongoing visual dialogue, back and forth, that felt like a distinctly new offering in the market.
Having me on board to help with naming, messaging, and product strategy was a win because I was able to ensure that everything was generated into the same cohesive brand universe. And when getting to work on naming, I actually started by first clarifying the app’s nomenclature.
Prior to my guidance, they called every photo sent a 'Taptalk' and every video sent a 'Video Taptalk. I advocated for these 3 changes to introduce simplicity and order:
When someone sent a photo to another person, we would refer to it, simply, as a 'Tap'.
If it was a video, we'd call it a 'Video Tap.'
And we'd call a user’s collections of received Taps 'Stacks'. You’d have a Stack of images and videos from your Mom, a Stack from your bestie, Stacks from everyone you engaged with on the app. The mental model we played with was the idea of a stack of polaroid pictures that you’d could rifle through whenever.
So! Taptalk became a one-tap moment sharing app, where you could save Stacks of of all your collected Taps. Say that five times fast.
When I started on naming, it became clear that the move there was to maintain as much brand equity as possible by shifting over ever-so-slightly from the name Taptalk to Tapstack. It just made sense, given the new dynamics within the product.
Unlike Snapchat, which allowed users to publish to a wide public audience and apply filters to their selfies or to do retakes to curate a perfect image, Tapstack was all about building deeper connection with just a dozen people by sharing real slices of one’s life, in the moment, fully unfiltered. So, the second you raised your finger from the Tap, it was already sent; no do-overs.
This commitment to authenticity was novel for a social media company at the time, and it informed the design exploration Annabel Mangold and I engaged in to imagine how we could further distinguish the brand. We recommended handwritten headlines, wabi-sabi shapes, and off-center grids to reflect the beautiful imperfection of the sort of real moments people were sharing on the app.
My work with the team was rounded out by producing this one-minute promo clip to reintroduce the brand under their new same-same-but-different name. The goal here wasn't to create a formal demo, but just to remind people how fun it was to share the moment, and the smiles they could elicit from their loved ones by doing so on Tapstack.
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