Digisocial Review

Digisocial is the latest in a trend of social networking apps with a view to focusing on audio clips rather than solely text alongside images. It's a neat service, too, but it suffers from some rather crippling privacy issues.

I'm a regular social networking user. I love dabbling with Facebook, Twitter, Path, Instagram and many other great services. The thing is, though, I like to keep things private. I see Twitter as the public portal to my life, the others much less so. Crucially, I like the option to deactivate an account at any point or be able to delete or adjust permissions for a clip at a later date. Digisocial doesn't offer any of this. A sign up process via Facebook requests a surprising number of privileges and while it's possible to restrict new content to Friends Only, it's not possible to adjust this further down the line. Once the decision has been made, that's, seemingly, it. For the privacy conscious, it's immediately off-putting.

That's unfortunate as Digisocial ticks all the other relevant boxes. It's easy to use, with an interface immediately familiar to Instagram users. Filters can be applied to the visual creations, although not the audio clips, along with liking and sharing or commenting. Potentially, it's an ideal way to track one's life and have more than just static photos of events. Adding voice memos, either to comments or one's own images is a neat touch, often saving the effort required of typing. Although, inexplicably, it's not possible to preview a comment before submitting it. Uploading is suitably fast so there's no restriction on that side of things, but users might find themselves wishing they could edit at a later date.

It's just the privacy issues that are the problem. They are also something that lend themselves to the rather mature content that litters the Top and Most Popular section of the app, something that is bound to be disheartening for those looking for a more family orientated service. As well as being rather similar to the problems that have recently plagued Vine, in the case of any genuinely offensive content, there seems to be no way of reporting a problem, either.

For those uninhibited about being constantly in control of their content, Digisocial will be ideal. It's fast, the audio is of a high quality and uploads quickly, plus it's easy to use. For those that feel uneasy, however, hold back for a hopefully more privacy-focused update. I know that I'll be one such person.