Two screenshots from Kaixin001's new photo-sharing app, 'TuTeng'.
Oh, great… another photo-sharing app with lots of filters. We haven’t reviewed one of those for, like, 24 hours. Yes, Kaixin001, China’s second-largest Facebook-like social network, now has its own app for snapping and sharing grungy photos of the cappuccino you’re about to drink. Called TuTeng, it’s out now for Android, with an iPhone version already in the works.
Kaixin’s TuTeng arrives very late to the funky party that was first started by Instagram (which is now weighing up a move into China). But unlike most of the other photo-sharing apps that we’ve looked at recently – such as TuDing, and Vida – TuTeng is locked-down to Kaixin, with no third-party login options. But thankfully it does support sharing of images to some other social media, such as Weibo.
In terms of appearance and philosophy, TuTeng is less like Instagram and more like Google’s soon-to-be-shuttered PhotoVine, with a gentle creamy-beige UI graced by leaf-green accents. The photo-filters are impressive and stylish, including some textures not usually seen on local photo apps; and they’re complemented by a very localized set of cartoony characters that you can add onto a photo and resize by pinching-in or out with your fingers.
Less impressive is the selection of photos seen in the ‘popular’ column when you first open the app (pictured above), which seems to suggest that not many users are posting original photos that they’ve snapped. It’s a grouch that I voiced recently with the Baidu-acquired PhotoSola – I don’t want to see random images that people are recycling from off of the web; if I want to see images of models hugging trees or an egg with a funny face drawn on it, then I’ll walk down to my dentist’s reception area and flick through some crappy magazines.
Grab Kaixin’s TuTeng app for Android from the homepage.
[Hat-tip to Sohu Tech news (article in Chinese) for spotting this]