&WTF Is Leftover?
Great question! Hmm…where do I start? Well, I should probably start by telling you that it’s an app for the iPhone. You can download it here. Most of you will end up deleting it, but it’s okay, we know it’s not for everyone.
In the app you can share a picture with your friends to start a “Leftover.” A Leftover is basically a chat room that disappears after 24 hours. I know, it sounds boring, but stick with me here. The fun part about it are the ampersounds. Ampersounds are kind of like hashtags, but when you tap on them they play a sound. For example, when you tap &fundraising, it plays a clip of Tina Fey in 30 Rock saying, “Can we have our money now?” Check it out, you can hear it without downloading the app here: http://s.lftovr.com/fundraising.
Ampersounds can be hilarious, inappropriate, disturbing, gross, and whatever else you twisted people of the internet come up with. That’s because they’re all user generated. Click on the microphone button at the top of the app, hold your finger down to record, and call it whatever you want.
&youareajoke
Leftover started as a joke. One day our co-founder, Kosuke, was at lunch with Dave, the guy who pays the rent at our co-working space, the Founders Dojo, and Meerkatter extraordinaire. They were chatting about dumb ideas, and Dave said something like: “What if you had an app where you could take a picture of leftover food and it would blast it out to your friends and they could claim it.” They joked about how dumb of an idea that was (and still is) and Dave proposed a bet. He was an Android user then, so he said: “If you build it, I will buy an iPhone just so I can use the app and tell you how dumb it is everyday.” Two days later, Kosuke had a working prototype and they were off to buy Dave an iPhone.
Everyone at the dojo and some close friends were on the app and we all started sharing. It quickly devolved into just about anything but actual leftover food. People would snap a picture of something random on the street, post it with the name of their location, then others would tap on the giant “CALL DIBBBSSSSS!!!!1!!1!!” button to claim it. Noone actually claimed anything. But, something about it was fun.
Kosuke was working on the app one day and he said, “I kinda want to comment on these.” So he added comments. It got a little more fun then.
But the addition of sounds was what really made it interesting. And it got even more fun.
&turndownforwhat
When Kosuke added sounds, a bunch of us at the dojo were trying to come up with what to call them. Earmoji was a popular idea. In addition, he needed a way to make them easy to share within the app. At first it was a hashtag, but that has a pretty well-known use case now. So, he looked at his keyboard and realized the ampersand (&) wasn’t used much and could work. Someone blurted out, “What if you call them ampersounds.” It had a nice ring to it.
I decided to join Kosuke when he told me there were days where over 2,000 push notifications were being sent, and only ~40 people had the app!
&anythingispossible
Basically, we’re tired of all these social networks where everyone is trying to be famous and whatnot. Leftover is for the everyday stuff that happens between all the other apps that you don’t want to share with everyone.
Let’s just hang out.
Let’s make friends laugh.
Let’s be friends.
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