10 Yetis Insight Blog - New app Galaxia launches with backing from Leonardo Di Caprio – What’s it all about?

A new app has entered the arena. Galaxia. The app created by the founders of Mobli, a photo sharing app, have created a new social platform where you can have different ‘personas’ and also share information and photos in different ‘worlds’. The founders of Mobli, were also well known for their viral hit app Yo in 2014, which you may or may not remember, simply sent the word Yo to someone who you selected on your friend’s list.

You can sign up to Galaxia either through your Twitter account, through Google Plus, via email or through Facebook. Once signed up this gives you your main account, from this point you can create new personas if you wish or you can go ahead and join ‘worlds’. These worlds are like groups for interests where likeminded individuals can join. The main defaults include things like showbiz news, food, travel and breaking news. You can create your own world, and when doing this you can choose whether it’s private, public or even monetised, as in, people have to pay for access to the ‘world’s’ content or the ability to post there.

Each persona you create keeps your interests and worlds separate from your other personas. I’ve had a quick go with it, and I could see that I would use one persona for all up to the minute gossip, current affairs and social media news, which relates to me and my work life. Then for one of my outside of work personas I’d create a ‘foodie’ account, which would give me updates and photographs about all things food. Another route I may go is to create a persona for films and movies which is another big interest of mine. So you can see how this might allow you to build up great news sources, much like an RSS feed, but allow you to perhaps build yourself as an influencer in these spheres.

The idea of these personas and worlds also reminds me a little of Reddit, a social news sharing site which gives you anonymity as well as the option to subscribe to different subreddits (much like worlds) around your interests. It is also very easy on Reddit to create new accounts as and when you like, you don’t even need an email. This is reminiscent of the ‘personas’ option, though it does seem a little easier with Galaxia, in that you don’t have to log out of your account to switch profiles.

The main problem I can spot with the app at the moment, is the lack of content, but also the lack of quality of the content. For example, in the foodie world, there are lots of different pictures of food, much like an Instagram feed, but the information with them is limited, and there also seemed to be no articles in the feed. There was no location tailoring, which may be a good idea if the app does progress, and no ability to filter as the user, which would be a good option so that you can find specific types of posts within the world, such as photos, articles, text posts etc…

Another issue which may come up is the use of ‘personas’ for trolling, but Galaxia seems to have this covered with the option to report users, and if one particular user keeps using different personas to cause trouble then they will be removed from the app altogether.

So, what is so interesting about this app? Well the ability to have different personas and interests all in one app, but this won’t be enough to make the app a success, there are already more established platforms for this sort of thing, e.g. Reddit, which I mentioned above. Also if the initial content is anything to go by, I can’t see this app hanging around for long. Some of the positives though, are the creators of this app have had reasonable success with some of their previous creations, Mobli and Yo; they clearly have a decent amount of funding (including Carlos Slim, a Mexican billionaire) to help PR and market this app. Also there has consistently been the very famous name, Leonardo Di Caprio thrown around in the press with this app, however the most I can find at the moment is ‘backed by’ and no further explanation, so I’m assuming (perhaps wrongly) that he’s thrown a bit of money into the creation of this app and that’s about it. But hey, it’s helped with the coverage.

I can’t imagine that Galaxia will last very long in the English speaking territories, but there are suggestions that when a Chinese version of the app launches (which will be soon) it will be very successful, as this is where Mobli has been targeted and has seen success as well as Vic Lee saying the app has: “potential to disrupt and transform large sectors of the Chinese market.”

The app is available on iOS in the app store now.