It’s not a photo. It’s not a GIF. It’s… a tool used by Indigenous Australians for hunting? Welcome to Boomerang, the latest app by Instagram, and the first app I’ve come across in a long time that doesn’t require you to log in or create an account.
Boomerang itself is the definition of minimalistic, there’s only two buttons on the interface: one that let’s you flip between the front-facing and rear-facing camera and the main button that you have to hit once to take your “Boomerang”.
“Boomerangs” are in essence GIFs, but instead of looping from beginning to end, they play from beginning to end and then in reverse before repeating. The result is a second long video composed of 10 images. The Boomerang loops from start to finish and then reversing back to start in that one second. This one second is duplicated twice more to make a 3 second long video that has 3 sets of the original Boomerang.
https://instagram.com/p/9JXQDIFnPL/
The result is some rather quirky videos that can convert an ordinary selfie into something that’s spontaneously funny. This is of course a social media app, you can share your Instagram to Twitter, or post it on Instagram and Facebook if you choose. All Boomerangs are automatically saved to your phone’s storage.
https://instagram.com/p/9MzAFar0ll/
Boomerang can be downloaded from the Apple App Store here and the Google Play Store here.
