Khoi Vinh’s Mixel is Addictive
After over a year in development, Khoi Vinn’s Mixel app for iPad launched this week and immediately received a lot of buzz. A video posted on their site does a fantastic job of explaining what you can do with Mixel. The video was done by Adam Lisagor, who has made similar product videos for other apps, and also produces a mens’ style podcast called Put This On. Lisagor also has an iconic beard, which is proving to be a popular element countless Mixels already.
Having been let down by overhyped social art apps in the past, I wasn’t sure Mixel was going to be interesting for more than a few minutes, but between $600k in funding (short-lived Color raised over $40m) and Vinh’s design and UX experience from four-and-a-half years at the New York Times has paid off. I was immediately captivated, and spent almost an hour browsing others’ collages, remixing them, and creating my own.
I have no idea how they intend to eventually monetize this. Peter Kafka over at All Things D asked him just that during a brief video presentation, and although Vinh did offer up things like in-app purchases and marketing tie-ins, he was coy on details (that was too easy, I couldn’t resist).
For now though, Mixel is a hit – notwithstanding the criticized requirement for logging in via Facebook, no doubt to piggyback off a huge existing network rather than slowly build their own.
The next few weeks will show whether this will become as big or bigger a hit as Instagram, and the months to follow will reveal whether they can take this from social phenomenon to viable business.
