Came across this app being introduced on Mashable just before Christmas last year and honestly who doesn’t like the idea of connecting with people from other countries? Been playing around with it for a while and here’s a quick rundown on the Wander app.
The Good
- Weekly Guides – When you first sign up, you will be matched up with someone from another country and both parties start sharing photos of your city, of course with the occasional social chatting. The interface is similar to Whatsapp, allowing you to send text messages and photos(no video). After one week with the current guide you get matched up again to a new guide. My guides so far are located in South Korea, USA, Finland and Australia which are pretty spread out across the world. You can choose to change a guide if you are not interested in that country.
- Knowing Their Country/City – The best part of the app is you can ask your guide information about hot tourist spots. At the same time you can also share with them something about Singapore, and sometimes I even get to find out things I didn’t know about my own country. If you are planning to travel to the country where you guide is and needed more information, it can’t get any better than this.
- Simple, Easy to Use – The process of using it is really simple. No complicated steps. Simply sign up via your Facebook, edit your profile and before you know it you are sharing info with your new guide somewhere else in the world.
The Bad
- No Video – Sometimes videos can be more informational. Not sure if the developers will build this feature into the app in the near future.
- Archived Guides – I only realise this issue after a few guides. I can’t chat or share information with old/expired guides, and this is frustrating sometimes especially if one week isn’t enough to gather enough info about the city with that guide. Here’s a quick fix: Ask them if you can add them to Facebook if you like your guides, so even if new guides come along you still can keep in touch with your old ones.
- Can’t Choose Country/City – There’s no way to get the app to request guides from a certain country or city. You get automatically matched up based on your profile. I’m hoping for a Japan guide but so far no luck.
- Buggy App – As with any new app, bugs are definitely lingering when using it. I get photo upload errors to false notifications of new guides and sometimes crashing/hanging of the app.
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I really like this Wander app and every week I get excited to befriend a new guide from other countries and getting to know them and their city. This app has made me use my phone camera more often as well, snapping photos of popular hangouts in Singapore. There’s a lot of potential in this app if the developers keep working to solve the bugs and adding new features. This app is free to download and do check it out and let us know how it goes for you.
Currently this app is only available for iPhone users, android version coming soon.
