Once, there was a app called Yo. All you did was send your friends the “Hey” message. It was one of the best mobile apps ever made, and while it still exists, everyone deleted it years ago and there is no one else for Yo. Now, a new app, Honk, would like us to play Yo again, but this time we’ll say “Honk”.
Horn is positioning itself primarily as a messaging app designed to make text-based chat more like an IRL conversation. After you download the app on iOS (without Android yet), open a chat with a friend and you’ll see a live stream of what the friend is typing in real time. There is currently no group chat. It is about recreating an individual interaction, complete with the ability to feel comfortable telling secrets, as each message disappears as it arrives. You’ll still want to keep your real secrets confined to Signal or an old whisper in your ear, but it works for fun.
We tested, and everything seems to be working fine. You can send photos or animated reactions that explode on the screen, but mostly, you just talk to a person while watching them correct typos or decide to say something else. Has anyone texted you and immediately replied, “I shouldn’t have said that”? Well, that person had no excuse. They should have looked at the message before sending it. But in Honk, a user can finally blame a bad message on an imprudent slip of the tongue (or finger).
But you can’t just download information about your friends when they’re not around –they need to be in the app to see the messages. If you want to chat with a friend, you have two options: open the app and see who’s online or send a horn. The Honk button sends them a notification message that says: “[Insert friend name] honked you. “If a user presses the button a second time, a message will be sent saying”[Insert friend name] honked you again. “
While real-time messaging may please some people, I would say that sending an Honk is Honk’s real killer feature, and should be used primarily to send cryptic horns. I just need everyone to download the app for a short time so I can know that my Honks are going to find a home.
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