Michael Sayman, who is one of Facebook’s more popular product managers, has just launched a brand new app. Called Show and Tell, the app can turn all sorts of visual communication into games. The app gives you an emotion and you have to act it out, the video of which is sent to a buddy. Your friend then has to guess whatever you are trying to act out. Sounds fun, right?
Hired when he was merely 17, Sayman has spent the past couple of years working for Facebook. And in case you are thinking that his job at Facebook is thanks to a fancy degree from a fancy college, well, think again. Sayman started coding when he was merely 13 and taught himself to code using tutorials he found on Google. By the time he was 17, he already had quite a few app launches under his belt.
That was also around the time when he caught Facebook’s attention. After presenting at the F8 conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg invited the young prodigy to come intern at the company. The internship was a success and Sayman now works as a product manager for Facebook. His last app launch was Lifestage, an app for teens that involved a lot of video profiles and high schools.
Meanwhile, Show and Tell appears to be an extension of the stress Facebook has been laying upon video of late. The app can work as an ice-breaker for people who are camera shy and don’t know what to do besides freezing, when facing the lens. By giving you a particular emotion to act out, Show and Tell diverts your mind from being too conscious about yourself and how you are going to look in the video. This ensure that you can focus upon creating the video instead of your face.
With Show and Tell, Michael Sayman is tapping into a market that has a lot of potential and that remains mostly untapped. Sure, videos have been tapped but how many apps have combined the idea of self-shot video with gaming? The theme of the app is pretty novel and could pick up soon. I mean we already know that videos are going to be the next medium of communication on social media, but who knows, they might just take the crown when it comes to personal communication as well
