Bitmoji, the app born in 2007 as a website called Bitstrips, was launched with a different goal initially – to let non-artistic background users create short comic strips.
Even as Apple and Facebook are about to introduce new avatars for their users – inspired by cartoons, Snap-owned avatar app ‘Bitmoji’ is ready to take on the two tech giants. On July 17, World Emoji Day, Apple decided to replace all of its executive headshots with a cartoony ‘memoji’. Memoji – a new feature arriving with the iOS 12 for all iPhone X users – will let them create custom avatars.
Apple is not the only one – some weeks back, an Android developer accidentally discovered a similar test feature hidden somewhere in the caves of Facebook app that looks like introducing avatars – which are cartoonish lookalikes that can be used to again communicate with friends and others across the social networking platform Facebook.
About this new development by Facebook and Apple, Bitstrips CEO and co-founder of Bitmoji Jacob ‘Ba’ Blackstock said: “We caught on to this a long time ago,” adding that six years back, he declared to a roomful of people that “it was inevitable that everyone on the internet would have an avatar – and we’re going to make them.”
A report in The Guardian stated that Apple vice-president Craig Federighi first unveiled the ‘memoji’ feature in June. “We’ve worked hard to build a deep set of customisation options to let our customers create an incredibly diverse set of memoji,” he had said.
Coming back to ‘Bitmoji’, the app born in 2007 as a website called Bitstrips, was launched with a different goal initially – to let non-artistic background users create short comic strips. It was a success, however, the real breakthrough happened five years later, when it got released as a Facebook app. And now the same app is set to compete with Apple and Facebook.
