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One would think
… that in today’s era of innovation and technology, advances in the field of communication would only move forward. However, it seems like instead of expanding our vocabulary, we have returned to the most basic form of communication pioneered by our ancient ancestors – the hieroglyphics.
The online world is slowly moving away from writings to the more pixeled world of what we can call today’s hieroglyphs. Nowadays, being able to navigate in the world of online communications requires the mastery of the emoji language.
It is seen as not only more convenient, but also as a more expressive way to communicate with each other.
Sending a heart shape emoji to express something that you like or love, or an angry face emoji to express your displeasure with a person or a situation has become a social norm in the online world of communication. However, a new phenomenon has been taking place recently.
Why has Bitmoji become so popular ?
The idea behind Genies
How does it work?
Step 1 – Create your Genie avatar
Once downloaded, the user’s first task is to select a personality type that would determine what kind of scenes the user would see. This is done by choosing the type of news outlet, brand, events, or buzzwords that the user is most interested in, for example, if you want to know more about tech related news, you would choose things like TechCrunch, Mashable, or Apple. While, if you are more interested in the aviation industry, you might go with FlightGlobal, United Airlines, or sustainable fuel.
Step 2 – Receive animated news scenes
Once your Genie avatar is ready, the app will send you up to 15 short animated videos throughout the day about the news that you have indicated to have the most interest in. All the videos will feature your Genie, for example, if you have indicated that you are interested in world politics, you might receive a video of your Genie looking at Jerusalem as Israel’s newly recognized capital. Each video will include a link to the source of the news article that will allow the user to tap on it in order to be redirected to the actual source of news online. In that way, the user will be able to read more on what is going on.
The videos might also include less serious news such as holiday reminders, or daily or local activities such as iceskating, or your city’s marathon.
Step 3 – Share with friends
What about social implications?
The habit of reading a newspaper to a morning coffee is long gone now. The big majority of people have also moved away from reading the online versions of newspapers. As sad as it might sound, our knowledge about what is going on in the world today mostly comes from social media. It all started with Twitter, with revolutionized news reporting by providing us with real-time updates and hashtags making the news go viral. What came next was Facebook, which despite shining a light on the potential of providing fake news article content, has become the dominant platforms for news. And lastly, Snapchat with its feed-style news platform has become the dominant platform for celebrity and holiday news.
Is Genies then the next big thing?
Genies has a great potential to revolutionize not only the way we get news, but also the frequency with which we do it. The idea of seeing yourself being featured as a star of a news video sounds exciting, and it might make people tap on the actual news source and influence them to get fully informed more often.
The app could also help to raise awareness or influence people to do something. For example, if a user sees a video featuring its Genie donating blood, or volunteering at a local shelter, then he/she might feel some kind of an internal push to actually go out and do it. 
Another way that the app might be revolutionary and might win over a big chunk of Twitter’s user base is because we are visual beings, and watching a short video resonates better and is more memorable to us than reading a short Twitter post. Therefore, Genies through its personalized storytelling has a potential to engage its audience more than any other social media site.
Despite the advantages that this entertaining way of providing news can have, at the end of the day, everyone has different opinions about specific topics, and so while designing the video content, Genies needs to be really careful not to cross the line between sensitive news information and the way they will portray it in the video, especially when it comes to political news. The editorial team at Genies will also have to pay special attention to make sure that whatever they are depicting in the news video is actually accurate, and that the parodies that they make are not offensive to anyone.
As we now, social media is able to strongly influence people’s behaviors, and having content related to topics such as party, drug, or sex featuring ones Genie bring a risk of negative influence. Therefore, in my opinion Genies should leave reporting on such kind of news, or events to others – mainly Snapchat.
Another issue that I see is with the product placement and sponsored content. There is a huge potential to monetize from these two sources, however, it will be important to make sure that the content showed to the user is preferences specific, doesn’t feel like forced advertising, and its amount is not overwhelming to the user.
In conclusion, Genies is a great app that could really help to get the younger generations interested in newsworthy events, and possibly motivate them to take an action, or a stand on a specific issue, however the way it will deliver the news must be sensitive and well-through-out in order to avoid being ignorant and getting into scandalous situations that might bring along huge repercussions. Many people seem to have faith in the success of Genies, and have poured over a lot of money. This includes a pop star Shawn Mendez. Although the potential of this avatar-based digital product is huge, I am eager to see whether it will succeed in creating a community around it, and whether it will create value in the long-run, or simply fade away as Nintendos’ Miiverse attempt at creating a social gaming community.
The free Genius app is currently available on iOS and Android.
Sources:
http://mashable.com/2017/12/08/army-of-bitmojis-bring-you-news/#Fvjdx7NFwPqF
https://mic.com/articles/186688/the-countdown-to-controversy-around-the-brand-new-genies-app-begins-now#.T7a0PSyM3
https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/genies-app
https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2017/12/08/genies-app-aims-to-make-bitmoji-obsolete.html
Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news
I agree with you – using emojis indeed makes an virtual interaction more similar to the more conventional and traditional ways. The fact that somebody actually did invent the word “emoji” a couple of years ago, and which by now is familiar to most likely every person under 30 globally is more or less evidence enough of the breakthrough. Nevertheless, regarding this application, who controls which news will be available in this feature? In your text it says that “Current news events” will be available. This has a potential to create tremendous backlashes if the young generation gets manipulated by the “right” or “wrong” kinds of news. Or will the application simply attach every single story published on the internet? In my opinion, that’s even worse, even though it’s comparable with how Facebook and other social medias currently are working. This is an especially relevant and important topic due to the current global conditions we are facing with everything from accusations of manipulated elections to “fake news”. The creators of this feature can achieve a huge influencing power through this application, thus can spread and create an opinion among the young ones that suits their company the best. Good or bad, don’t know.
Viktor,
Thank you for your comment, and yes as you said the creators of the app need to pay special attention to what kind of news they will put out there in order to avoid any kind of backlashes. According to my research, the CEO told CNN that they will have a team of editors whose job will be to make sure to do a factual checks before pushing any news onto the users. However, as with any kind of news that you read on social media there is a potential to that they are not 100% accurate. Because of that I believe they could reduce the limit of news notifications per day (which currently is said to be up to 15) and instead focus on making sure that the information they provide is taken from reliable and fact checked sources like for example, the New York Times, and not from some random blog posts. If they focus on quality rather than quantity, then they will be able to not only avoid troubling situations, but also position itself as a reliable source and users will more likely be inclined to download and use the app.
Victor, fake news threat is definitely a real world issue and something must be something done to combat it. I recommend you read my latest article on Google Bulletin and let me know what you think!