It’s been awhile since I’ve really just fallen in love (or heavy like) with any social apps. I’m a little burnt out on the infamous Facebook and I mainly just use it to lurk on family and friends now. I occasionally post things about food, date nights, and watching movies but its essentially a yawn fest user experience for me. I have also started to use my twitter account a bit more but it isn’t something I check everyday or have made a lot of connections with. I presume it could be because of the 140 character limit but I think there’s a little more to it than that such as the lack of engagement. I realize that getting people to interact with you should be at least a 50/50 effort but its just so much work. Some people are able to get interaction from their followers without putting in much action themselves but I don’t feel like I’m quite at that level. I definitely plan to continuously work on it though.

The only other social platform I’ve used sporadically in the past years is Google+, I joined while it was still in beta stage and for quite some time it was my absolute favorite site to frequent. I’ve made a few friends from the site and initially met my hubby through the site as well so it has had its highlights for sure. Unfortunately within the past year or so its struggled to hold my interest. But never fear, Amino is here! 

I did a bit of research on this app and couldn’t turn up much in reference to how long its been out but I’m certainly glad that I eventually came across it. I found an article referencing it all the way back in summer of 2015 so its definitely not new… just new to me. Essentially this app is for folks who like to interact with people who share similar interests with them. Those interest can range from things like anime and cosplay to makeup and nail art. There’s definitely something for everyone and I like that. The app still has the occasional bug issues but is overall relatively solid. I’ve read reviews stating that there are several issues with crashes on Android but I have yet to experience that on iOS. 

You can join as many communities aka Aminos as you’d like to cover your various interests. As of right now I’m a member of Kingdom Hearts, Team Mystic (a la Pokémon Go), and Geekdom. The latter is by far my favorite one but I’m sure anyone could have guessed that. Its a great community for geeks of all trades (coincidentally the leader of this Amino goes by “Geek of All Trades”). If you like comic books, anime, gaming, etc. its great for that. I’ve seen posts about Marvel, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Attack On Titan, Kingdom Hearts, Sword Art Online, and Pokémon… just to name a few. There’s virtually something for any topic you can imagine and its refreshing to interact with other people who are obsessed with the same things I am. Each Amino community also has chat rooms to get to know other members better.

I also like that the Geekdom Amino allows you to promote your website or YouTube channel as long as the content is geek related. That’s great news for someone like me who is trying to grow their channel and lure in subscribers. I’ve been contemplating ideas of what things I want to post on the community myself. They have a blog tab on your profile that lets you post about whatever you’d like then adds it to the general feed of the community for everyone to see. They also have a featured area that the leaders and curators manage which includes a range of geek related posts for the members to interact with. 

I don’t have many gripes about the user experience but I do hate that some of the community members use the blog feature to write about any thing they want and that it stays up until a curator catches it. I wish there was an option to choose if you want your blogs to go directly to the feed or simply be view-able to your followers or your profile only. There’s also a “follow all” option every time you join a new Amino so if you’re clicking through too quickly you’ll end up following the communities leaders and 40+ or so random members.  It has some advantages though, if people are randomly follow you they’ll see all your posts. However, if you’re the follower you can end up seeing lots of things you don’t wish to or have a list of inactive accounts on your following list. I also hate that you have to create an individual profile for every community you join… it’s fine if you’ve only joined 3 but if you are a member of 20 or more that could get a bit tedious. In addition, this app is only available on mobile platforms. There’s no website you can log into on your computer and as a result I have a feeling I’ll end up doing lots of write ups on my PC and then copy and pasting them as a workaround. I’m sure the app is capable of running on desktop software like BlueStacks as another alternative but I have yet to try that. Its not a perfect app then again I have yet to encounter any app that is, I get at least 5 updates with “bug fixes” a week. 

If this seems like an app you’d be interested in feel free to follow the links provided below to install the application on your device. Thanks for reading!