Made in South Korea by KTH (KOSDAQ: 036030), the photo-sharing app Pudding.to has proven to be really popular, and the company behind it claims to have attracted more than 500,000 downloads after its iOS and Android launch last week.
Pudding.to allows users to apply filters and ‘emotions’ to their pictures. The Korean photo app claims to have been downloaded 1.65 times per second on both app stores. KTH, which is a subsidiary of KT, the largest mobile carrier in Korea, might have given the app some merketing push to help it achieve such download figures.
Pudding.to differentiates itself from Instagram – and a number of Instagram-like apps in the region – by providing its app on both iOS and Android platforms. It has a panorama feature which could be popular because it’s unique in this kind of app. It also allows people to tag an emotion to their picture, to express how it makes them feel, which in my opinion is kind of redundant.
I agree that the app is sleek and easy to use. But it feels just like any other Instagram clone. As most of my friends are on Instagram, it gives me more incentive to post my pictures there instead. I’m sure many of you feel the same.
Nonetheless, Pudding.to’s growth is still pretty amazing. KTH also has its Pudding Camera app, for simple snapping and sending to Twitter without the whole social network element that Pudding.to brings to it. It also means that all of the original app’s know-how and funky filters are brought into its popular new SNS.
But I’m not entirely convinced that its users are really enjoying themselves. Some comments that I read on the Android app store were a little nasty. Or perhaps everyone is just waiting for Instagram to launch an Android version while using other clones (including this) as a substitute for the time being.