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Facebook launches an experimental app for messaging close friends via Apple Watch
Facebook’s internal R&D group has today launched a new app that lets you keep up with your close friends via your Apple Watch. The app is called Kit, or Keep in Touch, and works using a combination of QR codes and Facebook’s existing Messenger service.
According to Kit’s App Store description, you get started with the app by first scanning a QR code on your watch or by entering in an access code at fb.com/devices. You then select the Messenger contact you want to stay in touch with using Kit.
The app allows you to send a variety of messages with just one tap, including voice recordings, emoji, location sharing, scribbles and even dictation input — similar to how using iMessage from your Apple Watch works today. However, these messages are being sent over Facebook’s own Messenger service, not SMS or iMessage.
The new app also allows you to receive and respond to notifications and read your contact’s messages to you.
The idea behind the app is to allow users to stay in touch without having to pick up their phone, the App Store description explains.
While Facebook’s Messenger already offers support for Apple Watch, Kit is focused more on keeping up with close contacts only– a significant other, best friend, or family member, for example. That allows it to offer a different user interface and experience from Messenger on Apple Watch, where you have to navigate on a tiny screen to read and respond to your messages.
Kit is the latest from Facebook’s internal R&D division, NPE Team, which tests out new app concepts and rapidly iterates. So far, the NPE Team has put out a variety of new social apps like meme creator Whale, conversational app Bump, music app Aux, video app Hobbi, and most recently, Tuned, an app for couples. But only a few remain available today, as Facebook had said previously that the NPE Team apps that don’t find an audience will be quickly shut down.
To date, the NPE Team apps have launched new social experiences that weren’t tied to Facebook’s existing products. Kit, however, ties into Messenger — a move that could help it gain more of an audience, as it can tap into Messenger’s over a billion users. In addition, Kit could prove especially useful in the COVID-19 era, as people are trying not to touch their smartphones while out in public and wearing gloves. Instead, they could respond to critical messages from their close friends or family over Kit, without having to use their phone.
Kit is also notable for being the first of Facebook’s NPE Team apps to launch on Apple Watch.
Facebook doesn’t typically comment on its NPE Team experiments, and will instead point back to its original announcement that said availability would depend on the app.
According to data from Apptopia, the app hasn’t ranked yet on the App Store charts, as it’s still new. It appears to be only offered in Canada, at present.
Kit is a free download for iOS, but is for Apple Watch only.
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Patreon acquires Kit to let creators bundle merch in subscriptions
If content creators want to sell pricier monthly content subscriptions, offering stickers, pins, signed photos or t-shirts can convince fans to pay a higher fee and keep them loyal with a physical connection. That’s why patronage platform Patreon just acquired Kit, a startup building a merchandise logistics backend so creators don’t have to fiddle with spreadsheets and stuff envelopes themselves.
“Over 60 percent of today’s Patreon creators either want to or are already delivering some kind of physical merchandise,” says Patreon’s VP of Product, Wyatt Jenkins. Together, the startups could help Patreon creators develop merch items that fans subscribe to get ahold of, potentially shelling out for $10 or $20 per month tiers rather than basic $1 or $5 online content-only tiers.
The deal also could help Patreon stay ahead of YouTube and Facebook, which are encroaching on its subscription patronage model. Patreon now has 2 million patrons backing 100,000 creators. It paid out $350 million over its first five years through 2017, and expects to send creators another $300 million in 2018, while taking a 5 percent cut.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ninety percent of Kit’s team, mostly product and engineering talent, will join San Francisco-based Patreon, though they’ll stay put in NYC as a satellite office the rest of the year. Kit had raised $2.5 million from Social Capital, Expa, #Angels, Precursor and Stanford’s StartX, as well as angels like Ellen Pao and Slack’s April Underwood.
“When we think about merch, it’s never been fully about the thing — the sticker or the t-shirt — there’s this relationship. This human-to-human connection,” says Kit co-founder and CEO Camille Hearst.
Kit was in the process of pivoting toward merchandise logistics and raising a Series A when it began talks with Patreon, leading to the acquisition. The startup was originally built as a way for social media stars and online celebrities to earn affiliate marketing fees by recommending products to fans through Kit, which took a cut of the referral dollars. Some creators showing off their “Kit” of camera equipment, sportswear or caffeination supplies were earning tens of thousands of dollars.
“We were at a stage where everything was going in the right direction. We had seen strong growth in monthly active users and how much creators were making,” Hearst says, noting Kit had reached $15 million in gross merchandise value. For what it’s worth, we hadn’t heard the startup was #crushingit and Patreon repeatedly refused to give even a ballpark figure for the price, so this might have been more of a soft landing.
“It just seemed like we would be able to accelerate what we were doing by joining with Patreon. Merch is very transaction-focused compared with a subscription,” Hearst explains, touting the high lifetime value of recurring payments over one-off purchases. “You can help creators earn a lot more money if you use merch to sell subscriptions.”
The pre-Kit Patreon team
The plan at Patreon is to build out a new open merchandise provider platform. Creators will be able to choose between a variety of merch partners ranging from those that turn their existing logo into physical goods to those that will design items based on merely vague ideas from the star. But in the meantime, Kit won’t be shutting down or ditching its affiliate program because “we don’t want to turn off any revenue streams” that creators depend on, Hearst promises.
“Right now creators have to choose between different merch partners,” without collective bargaining power or enough data to know what works, says Jenkins. “We can have set pricing for all those merch partners that will be lower than they can get on their own,” while alleviating creators from having to juggle spreadsheets of who gets what and mailing it all themselves.
The plan for Patreon to monetize merch is a little less clear, though Jenkins says, “We’re going to grow the pie and we want a piece of the growth.” The idea is that using Patreon’s merchandise platform will incur extra fees beyond the skimpy 5 percent it earns on subscriptions. If adding a merch item significantly boosts the subscriber number for a certain tier, Patreon will take a TBD cut. For comparison, YouTube takes a much more hands-off approach, merely listing suggested merchandise partners with whom to work.
“We want creators to make a living. That’s not a side hustle. You have to make more money year over year, You have to be able to do things like buy a house or get healthcare,” Jenkins concludes. “All the other platforms are ‘give us your content and we’ll give you a little side change.’ That kind of led us down the merch path. Creators are were begging for merch.”
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