What is Peach? Everything you need to know about the latest social media craze

For social media lovers looking for something new there's a new app taking the messaging scene by storm. The app, called Peach, has been developed by Vine's co-founder Dom Hofmann and offers users exciting new ways to chat by posting gifs, drawing pictures and sharing music. Although it is currently only available for iOS users, it has quickly gained popularity and is moving up the downloads chart on Apple's App Store.

The latest addition to the social media family is gif compatible and also allows users to let their creativity rule their conversations. The app lets users draw out cute and messy figures with a finger and also encourages users to "check in" to locations, "shout" out a word using bigger letters, share the users' current location and weather and even tag the name of the users' favourite book and/or TV show. Besides, the app has loads of emojis.

Peach is described as a mix of Twitter and Slack but is app-only so messages are kept private. This means that unlike Facebook, Twitter and their ilk, Peach is not a web-based app so users can't post their messages publicly. It is also, ironically, more selective in terms of being social. Unlike Instagram, which is based on followers, Peach is more "friend" based. This means that when trying to "add" a friend, one has to input the individual's phone number or email id. Users' profiles are also kept relatively private, especially since their online activities cannot be viewed on the web.

Peach takes its inspiration from various currently available social media apps. For instance, its music sharing feature is not unlike that of Shazam. Users can spot a song by holding their phones up and share it by accessing either Spotify and/or Apple Music. Taking a leaf out of Facebook's "poke" page, Peach also provides users with a multitude of options to wave, kiss, boop, hiss or even give a piece of virtual cake to each other.

Despite the buzz it seems to have caused in the past week, the app is still very new and very limited. There have been a host of other social media apps in the past, which have tried valiantly and failed miserably to make a place for themselves in the cut-throat competitive world of social media. Whether Peach will swim or sink while dodging the sharks of the tech industry, remains to be seen.