A screen shot from the new creative app, Thred.(Photo: Syntertainment)
The Sims creator Will Wright’s latest project is ready for you to play — on your iPhone.
And as with his past games including The Sims and Spore, you are the creator. But this new application is not a game, it’s a mobile app called Thred.
Thred, which is out today for the iPhone — but can be used on iPads, too — lets users create multipaneled photo stories that can contain Web links to locations and topics and can be shared via social media.
“We all have these data clusters or data streams attached to us,” Wright said. Thred quickly lets you “take your data sources and package it into something visceral and visual and social to share and interconnect it with other people’s stories.”
Thred makes use your photos and other multimedia to create a multipaneled stream-like presentation. You can add captions and word bubbles, stickers and filters, as well as links to Web content and your location.
A screen shot from the new creative app, Thred. (Photo: Syntertainment)
“In some senses, it’s very much like comic language,” Wright said, “But we think we have built something that has the power of the World Wide Web. It has a lot of the same features, but it is far easier to create (with) and far easier to bring your whole life into it and share it and more natural to consume on a mobile device. … The idea is I want to be able to browse this with one hand at Starbucks.”
Since threads can be linked to locations, a whole host of stories could be found when someone comes to a historical landmark, for instance. “In some sense, we are spatially distributing these stories,” Wright said. “Wherever I am at I can l see what other stories happened here. I can look up 10 cool things that happened there or what this statue means.”
A screen shot from a Thred created by Mike Snider. (Photo: Syntertainment)
Wright’s company Syntertainment created Thred. Funding support included Andreessen Horowitz, Mayfield Fund, Betaworks, and Unity CEO (and former Electronic Arts CEO) John Riccitiello.
Eventually an Android app will come, but for now Wright and the Thred team are focused on the best iOS experience. “I really want to hear what users think and what they do with it,” Wright said.
You can see Mike Snider’s first Thred, created at Nationals Park earlier this week, and you can follow him on Thred at mikesnider and on Twitter: @MikeSnider
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