Welcome to amo

The bike rides. The sleepovers. Your first cigarette. Gossiping about your latest crush. Being consoled when they break your heart. Discovering a new city. Re-discovering your own (at 2AM). The hungover brunches. The tears. The laughs. The love.

So many of the moments that shaped us were shared with friends.

And then those moments started happening online. Posting photos from last night’s party. Tagging your latest situationship. Poking your roommate (whatever that means??). It was exciting and well intentioned, but something got lost along the way. The platforms that were built to bring friends closer together became places we go to scroll through videos… of strangers.

We’re entertained, but where did our friends go?

A new kind of social company

We’re a group of friends that have spent our lives building stuff for friends. amo brought us back together and we’re now ready to share what we’ve been working on all along.

We believe that friendship still deserves a place online. Our first app, ID by amo, brought a new take on the social profile, providing an unlimited board for you and your friends to express yourselves on. Our second app, Capture by amo, is the camera you create that’s made just for friends. And completing our early collection of apps for friends is Location by amo. It’s the app that puts your friends on the map — from checking in on your crew to making moves to meetup.

Together, they form the beginning of a new kind of social company. One that exists across multiple apps, but only one you. One with many more ideas to come (soon). We’re going to experiment, build, re-build again, and no doubt get lots wrong along the way. But we hope that what we get right earns its place on your home screen — as a new collection of apps that serve you and your friends above all else.

On amo, your profile, friendships, feed, and settings are shared across the apps. Trying a new one takes no time at all as your info (and your friends!) are already waiting for you. When we have new ideas, we won’t be constrained by an ever-growing tab bar and the four corners of just one app. We’ll make something entirely new and give you the choice on whether to use it or not. Take what you need, ignore what you don’t.

We feel a real responsibility when it comes to creating stuff for you and your friends — and doing so the right way. We believe that the company that survives long term in this space is the one that aligns itself closest with your best interests. So to keep ourselves accountable, we developed some principles that guide what we do.

Our principles

1. Creation over consumption

   True happiness comes from deepening your friendships, not racking up more of them. So why do most social products feel so shallow, with a double-tap to like and meaningless story replies? We think friendship is an act of creation, not consumption. After all, the effort is where the love is.

2. Simple apps, not super-apps

   We believe that great products deliver clear, singular value. Yet so many of today’s social apps are bloated with features — demoting friends to a single tab, or worse. With more than just one screen to work on, we’re granted freedom to build something bigger that’s genuinely sustainable, for you and your friends above all else.

3. Friendship is a feeling

   It’s hard to quantify the impact our friends have on us. Yet today’s social products sure do try — with likes and followers pushing us to perform for one another. Our goal is never to keep you on our apps for as long as possible, or any one metric alone. It’s about how you feel at the end of the day that matters, even if you didn’t need amo that day.

4. This should feel fun

   We believe that the products that connect you to your friends online should express the fun and chaos of friendship in real life. We’ll always take time to craft stuff that makes you smile. We’re inspired by an era where everyone’s page was not the reflection of one designer in San Francisco, but a reflection of their truest self. When the art was valued more than the science.

5. Love thy city

   We’re inspired by our city and everything in it — the most ancient social network that has stood the test of time. The art, fashion, and the city’s magical ability to connect us at the right time, night or day. Hundreds of different places to hang out, be inspired, meetup, or split up.

Welcome to amo.