Introducing Tworlds, an app from a Dutch designer that aims to answer the question: “Is there anyone else out there doing this exact same thing at this exact same moment?” Tworlds
Introducing Tworlds, an app from a Dutch designer that aims to answer the question: “Is there anyone else out there doing this exact same thing at this exact same moment?”
Tworlds offers a sizable handful of themes. Pick one, and snap a photo of whatever you're doing at that moment that pertains to the theme. Tworlds
Tworlds offers a sizable handful of themes. Pick one, and snap a photo of whatever you're doing at that moment that pertains to the theme.
The app then pairs your moment with a moment from another user, from anywhere in the world. Tworlds
The app then pairs your moment with a moment from another user, from anywhere in the world.
A split-screen diptyque of a moment frozen in time appears on your screen. It feels a little like Snapchat, except it's not ephemeral. Pictures can be saved. Tworlds
A split-screen diptyque of a moment frozen in time appears on your screen. It feels a little like Snapchat, except it's not ephemeral. Pictures can be saved.
Unlike other photo-sharing apps, Tworlds doesn't let you use filters or editing to fix up the moments. It's meant to be a more pure distillation of that moment. Tworlds
Unlike other photo-sharing apps, Tworlds doesn't let you use filters or editing to fix up the moments. It's meant to be a more pure distillation of that moment.
The best part of the Tworlds experience? an instant connection with someone halfway around the globe, maybe even from somewhere you’ve never heard of. Tworlds
The best part of the Tworlds experience? an instant connection with someone halfway around the globe, maybe even from somewhere you’ve never heard of.
It’s the stuff of schmaltz and bad screenplays, but nevertheless: Everyone, at one point or another, has wondered, “Is there anyone else out there doing this exact same thing at this exact same moment?”
That question used to be more romantic, before social media came along and gave us phone-sized windows into the lives of others. But even those glimpses are curated according to who you already know, the manicured moments they’ve cherry-picked, and when they choose to share them. So when the question floated through Dutch designer Antoine Peters’s mind (while he was staring out a window, no less) he got the idea to build an app that would answer the question in the most literal sense possible. He found a local group of developers, Noodlewerk, to build it, and had his girlfriend design some playful black-and-white graphics.
Tworlds is simple. Log in, and allow the app to know your location (but, “No worries, it’s only to the level of city,” the app assures you), and then choose one of the 20 or so subject prompts. Say you tap on “#rainbow.” Snap a picture of that gorgeous rainbow (or maybe of some Skittles. Whatever! Be creative.) and Tworlds will immediately share that photo with someone else who, at that same moment, is doing something #rainbow. In return, you’ll get that person’s picture, and the two will turn into a diptyque of a moment frozen in time. As Peters sees it, this could yield all kinds of experiences, ranging from competitive and playful to ones that take the edge off of loneliness, maybe “helping you when you’re feeling sad, or when you can’t sleep.”
I gave Tworlds a whirl. With limited scenery around, I tapped “#relax,” and sent a picture of an armchair with some throw blankets out into the wild. In return, I got a picture of someone’s bedspread in Riga, Latvia. Next, I chose “#book,” and snapped a shot of a stack of books (some Michener, Life by Keith Richards, an art book), and got back a picture of The Da Vinci Code from someone in Kitchener, Canada. So far, nothing earth shattering popped up. In fact, the most interesting thing about both exchanges wasn’t the content, it was the speed with which it happened.
So it turns out that in practice, Tworlds is pretty mundane. But that might be it’s appeal. Some of that banality is by design, in that Tworlds doesn’t offer the filters and photo editing that typically glam things up. But it’s also just reflective of everyday life, and could allow for the same kind of stranger-empathy that other similar projects, like the 20 Day Stranger app from MIT’s Playful Systems Group, are after. There’s shades of Snapchat, or even Chatroulette, to Tworlds. It promotes the same kind of spontaneity and grit that makes (made) those weird corners of the Internet so addictive. And here, there’s a new layer: an instant connection with someone halfway around the globe, maybe even from somewhere you’ve never heard of.
You can download Tworlds (iOS) for free.
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