Blixt is a superbly and lovingly crafted iPhone app for App.net by developers Bryan Clark and Jesse James Herlitz, who have been working on the app for several months now. Mikhail and I have been beta testing the app and really like its unique style and minimal approach to the social network.
App.net launched with some great hype and promise and steadily garnered a fair bit of serious users who actively participated in conversations on the service. Although there were plenty of naysayers, the active users always found App.net useful as a service. There were several apps developed for App.net across different platforms, Riposte being my choice of app for my iPhone. However, when I first got my hands on Blixt, I was intrigued.
Blixt is different. It brings a whole new style and character with it. The app is spiffy, uses stark colors and makes great use of blur on iOS 7. There are some lovely animations built into the interactions in the app. It makes heavy use of gestures to navigate and move around in the app. Blixt uses your cover image from your profile as the background, so every view is customize for you. I love how, when moving from one screen to the other, the text of a post floats while the background moves. There’s a neat sense of depth in the app and the overall experience screams pixel perfection.
Blixt takes a very minimal approach towards features. With v1.0 that debuted on the App Store a few days ago, Blixt includes native Push Notifications (with some really nice sounds), unified search, Multi-account support and support for Stream Marker. Of course, there’s integration with App.net Passport, but a strange lack of 1Password integration.
If you’ve still stuck around, you’re gonna love Blixt. If you didn’t, Blixt’s interactions are definitely worth giving App.net a try. Blixt is available for $2.99 on the App Store.