Creator of Gas and tbh create an app for disappearing photos via iMessage

Nikita Beer, the creator of popular apps like anonymous polling app tbh (acquired by Facebook) and anonymous compliment app Gas (acquired by Discord), has created a new app called Explodewhich focuses on disappearing messages on iMessage.

Explode works as an applet for Apple’s Messages app. It helps you send disappearing messages to other people. Users can see text or images once, and then… explode. The app prevents users from taking screenshots as well. In a post on X, Bier said that only the sender needs the Explode app.

Although the app is free to download, users can subscribe to Explode+ for $39.99 per year or $7.99 per month to unlock all features. Paid users receive screenshot alerts, can block screenshots completely, can replay photos they’ve previously sent, and can lock viewing of photos after they’ve been sent.

Bier’s posts on X about Explode lean heavily toward the taking holes in Snapchat. He said in his post that after he held talks with Snap about acquiring Gas, the social media company kicked Gas off the SnapKit developer platform.

“Two years ago, I met with the CEO of Snapchat to discuss the acquisition of my former company. I openly shared how quickly we were growing. And just one week later — over the Thanksgiving holiday — Snapchat launched our SnapKit app, bringing our growth to a screeching halt.

In a screenshot of an email seen by TechCrunch, Snap sent an email to developers stating that Gas was using URL attachments to provide friend recommendations without the sender’s explicit intent — Snap believed this violated its policy and tried to replicate Snap’s functionality. Gas works through contacts and did not rely on Snap’s social graph, Pierre said.

However, Snap has been a major driver of the app’s growth. Pierre said this in an October 2022 post 23% of Snapchat’s US user base has watched the gas story. He said that sharing the gas poll with Snapchat was placed as a primary button in the app, and Snap’s action led to the app being disabled for seven days.

Snap did not immediately comment on the story. There was a disagreement in the end Gas in January 2023 and Closing in November 2023.