Locket, a new social app, burst to top App store charts in the fits days of 2022 riding a clever premise of putting live photos from friends in a widget found on the iOS home screen. Locket turns Apple’s widget system into your private social networking platform. The ordinary function of the Widget system is to showcase information such as news, weather, or inspirational quotes. It also showcases photos from the iPhone gallery.
Locket, launched on January 1, 2022, is an innovation by Matt Moss, who was first doing it as a side project and not the main focus. Moss, a U.C. Santa Barbara graduate and a former Apple Global Developer Conference scholarship winner, built the Hawkeye Labs platform as his main project. The platform is for user research and testing.
Locket’s Quick Success
According to Apptopia’s app store data, Locket became the number 1 app on the U.S. App Store on January 9 after becoming the top Social Networking app a day before. Apptopia also reports that global installs have reached 1 million, and around 31 percent of installations are from the U.S.
Moss credits rapid adoption to TikTok videos that he published to a Locket company account to show his app in action. His video went viral and received 100,000 views in a few days. Other TikTok users began making content featuring the app and custom sound on the first Locket video.
The videos blew up Locket even more among the young users of TikTok. Moss notes that “one video by a TikTok user in U.K. got 5 million views in a day.” Moss says he did not use paid influencer marketing or run paid advertisements anywhere, including TikTok, despite it being a strategy by app developers to drive installs after launch.
He still attributes Locket’s position 1 on the iPhone Top Free Apps charts because of TikTok exposure. In addition, early adopters helped to drive further installs by inviting many friends to download and check out the app.
The Story behind Locket
Moss reveals his first reason to build it was to create a present for his girlfriend during her birthday. She was going to a school far away, and the idea of an app allowing Moss to get her photos on his home screen seemed an appealing way of staying in touch.
Moss built the Locket within two weeks and used it to exchange about five photos with his girlfriend every day for more than six months.
The app’s capacity to store sent and received photos in a history section made it a fun way to look back at the photos. Friends of Moss and his girlfriend took notice and requested to use Locket with their loved ones.
The demand inspired Moss to make it available for users on App Store.
Locket is a free download on iOS with a 3.4-star rating. However, tests have since found issues that caused a challenge with the onboarding process and widget.
