“Hey could you email me that picture you just took?”

While sharing online has taken the web by storm and has since become old news. Sharing digital information locally has always been a hassle away from out computers and high speed internet connections. Not any more.

Say hello to Chirp

Chirp is the little mobile app that let’s you share anything that has an URL or can be uploaded and given an url locally. All you need is the app. It’s free. It’s tiny, takes seconds to download and starts instantly and you’re set. No, you don’t need an account (though you can get one) no you don’t need to connect it with facebook. You just start it. And now you’re receiving anything being shared.

How does it share? This is the other brilliant part of this app. It sends the URL (everything is shared through their servers so an internet connection is needed, albeit not a fast one) through a short sound clip.

That’s right, you hear a short blip-blop message as if R2-D2 really needs to pee, and there’s the photo on your screen. It’s cute. But i’s also really smart. Since it shares through sound you can share messages with someone over the phone. I myself got a picture from the host of a Podcast I listen to. He just told me to open Chirp and I got to see what he was talking about.

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Business model suggestion

Since I hate to see great services like this go away, usually because it’s hard to figure out a business model. I thought I’d share a suggestion. Chirp, you listening? Great. Here’s one way to monetize.

Providing the app for without an account is absolutely crucial to grow. If users need to jump through any hurdles at all Chirp will become another Bump. But without the first-mover-on-new-platform-hype. Keep it simple to share.

Instead charge for feature where a cost is tangible for the user: Access and Storage.

Access

Later access to the files. Keep the latest 3-5 shared things be available. Let the users purchase access to the rest. One advantage to this is that it’s obvious to users. There’s an understandable cost benefit. It’s also just on the front end which makes it easy to implement (until you’ve got an open API).

Storage

In short: Huge. Ass. Files. Trying to share a 500MB HD movie clip? “Sorry this file is so large you need to pay 99 cents to cover the bandwidth costs”. No problem.

Summing up

Chirp is awesome. Go get it.

And please Chirp, add support for all platforms. Open up an API and let developers go crazy with the free service. I’d love to Chirp stuff to my Mac or my friends PC / Android.