GLMPS Launches A Cool New Photo Sharing App With A Video Twist

There are a few photo sharing apps out there on the market today, as you may have noticed. In fact, there are enough choices that TechCrunch’s own Alexia Tsostsis and former Myspace marketing guy Sean Percival created a flowchart to help you find you way to the right app. It’s a space that, while popular, is in desperate need of some fresh ideas. So, starting today, there’s yet another photo sharing app on the App Store, but this one has a pretty cool twist.

Founded in 2010, San Francisco-based GLMPS is a bootstrapped startup that is today releasing its eponymous iPhone app, which offers an experience the startup likens to a “visual status update”. What does that mean, exactly? Well, put simply: GLMPS blends video with traditional image capturing, so that the 5 seconds or so before one snaps a photo is captured by the app in quick, abbreviated video form.

Essentially, this is akin to “pressing play on your photos”, so that when you view a still image, a small thumbnail appears in the lower right hand portion of the screen, showing the moments leading up to capture in video — or suped-up .gif — form.

Once a user captures their photo, the photo-video loads in their iPhone photo library and then, like other photo sharing applications, they can easily share those glmpses via Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, email, SMS, and so on. For today’s launch, GLMPS has partnered with Foursquare, among others, to add a further enriching photo-video layer to the check-in experience.

It’s a great idea, and one of those simple ones that, once you see it in action, it becomes hard to believe that it hasn’t been done before. Adding those few spontaneous moments before a photo is taken in video form, briefly taking one back in time, is a nifty feature. It doesn’t quite feel done yet, but there’s plenty of potential. Just ask Scoble.

GLMPS is currently free on the iPhone, and Android apps (and beyond) are headed down the pipeline in the near future. The GLMPS team, which includes Paul Robinett, Nick Long, and Esther Crawford, will also soon be adding the ability to stitch together “glmpses” to create highlight reels of a user’s photo-video library from the perspective of the individual, or groups, based on time, tags, and location.

“We saw GLMPS earlier this year and it was a no-brainer to integrate with the foursquare platform”, said Foursquare VP of Mobile & Strategic Partnerships Holger Luedorf. “GLMPS enriches the check-in experience by providing a quick, rich snapshot of the moment. It’s our goal to give our millions of users and our brand partners the ultimate engagement experience, and GLMPS is a powerful tool for everyone in the foursquare ecosystem”.

For more info and to start glmpsing your life today, please visit http://www.glmps.com.