Leadbolt had the pleasure of participating at Apps World North America, where Twitter’s founder and CEO, Biz Stone, and Ben Finkel, Co-founder and CTO of SUPER, led the keynote fireside chat to discuss lessons from their joint venture.

Ben Finkel (SUPER Co-Founder), Biz Stone (Twitter CEO and Co-Founder SUPER) and Brad Stone (Writer, Bloomberg Business) discuss joint venture, SUPER.

Here’s what we learned about the SUPER app and how it will change the way we communicate.

What is SUPER?

It’s Twitter with a visual and emotional twist.

The intent of SUPER is to bring out the emotional understanding of the messages we send. In email, for example, how many times have you received an upsetting message, only to realize later that you had misinterpreted the tone? By creating tweet messages that are more visual, including background graphics, font treatments and including actual faces (instead of names), SUPER founders are “hallucinogenically optimistic” that a picture is indeed worth a thousand words – (or at the very least, makes an emotional connection beyond the ability of 140 characters.)

SUPER Features

Instead of tagging a person using text, SUPER uses face-tagging. SUPER identifies the named person and populates the text with a picture of the person’s face in a circle. You’ll see more images, less hyperlinks, so the overall effect is less jumbled and more visually impactful.

You can also do more with the text format, such as enlarge the size. The oversized font treatment is an ode to mass media artist, Barbara Kruger, who popularized the artistic style and became famous for her work, “I Shop Therefore I Am.”

But is there room for yet another platform, given that we already have Twitter and Snapchat? According to Biz and Ben the answer is an emphatic YES. “Yes, of COURSE there is room for innovation. Just three years ago, Snapchat introduced disappearing images, and that was new. Face-tagging has never been done before.”

SUPER introduces face-tagging, for a more personal and emotional connection.

Tweets become mini-masterpieces, evoking emotional understanding. Enlarged fonts, background graphics create impact.

Leadbolt’s Marc Carr catches up with Twitter CEO Biz Stone