Strange photo app Frontback adds ‘social’ to its network with new Reactions feature

Frontback is a curious blend of Instagram and journal, a place to post about the outside world as much as one’s reaction to that experience.

Over the past year or so, Frontback has gone from tiny startup to cross-platform image network, encouraging users to post a stitched image from the front and back cameras of their smartphones. Hence, Frontback.

But until this week, interactions were pretty much one direction: they couldn’t respond in any meaningful way to these photos. With Frontback 2.0, available for iPhone and Android, the company has addressed that deficit with Reactions, a photo or five-second video appended to each Frontback image.

It’s an interesting idea, and once the company hopes will lift it beyond being merely an Instagram competitor. Facebook-owned Instagram, while incredibly popular, has struggled to figure out comments for its photos, which often get overwhelmed in spam and low-quality “Follow me back!” type posts.

Frontback intends to avoid this by resisting text-based responses, though the potential for abuse is alive here, too. Still, with a much smaller, more dedicated following, Frontback could be the next big image social network.

[source]Google Play, iTunes[/source]