Today marks a new chapter for YLF. We’re going mobile! As of yesterday afternoon our new app, “Realtime Style Advice”, is available on the iTunes App Store. Android users, don’t fret. Your version of the app is in progress.

Realtime Feedback On The Go

We are starting our foray into mobile with the thing that we thought would be most useful on the go: getting rapid feedback on outfits and items. You can take a photo, add some text, optionally add a yay or nay poll, and post it for feedback.

Put differently, the new app brings the Realtime component of the forum to your phone. When you make a new post using the app, it also appears on the forum as a Realtime post. When people post Realtime posts on the forum using their web browser, they also appear on the phone.

Starting Simple

We have started with Realtime topics because we think that’s where a phone can add the most value — giving and receiving time-sensitive feedback. Whether you are in a store dressing room wondering which pair of jeans looks best, or at home in front of your mirror deciding what to wear for date night, this app will be a quick and easy way to ask for that input.

And if you are waiting on line, taking a breather at work, or need a break from Twitter, then opening the app to give people some on the spot feedback might be a fun way to kill some time.

Of course, it would be great to have the entire forum experience available from the app, and that is exactly where we plan to take the app next.

Free is Not Free, YLF is $4.99

Many iPhone apps are free. Some have free “light” versions so you can try before you buy. We have decided to do neither of these things. The YLF app costs $4.99. This reflects our goal of attracting people who are sincere about participating in the YLF community. There is no doubt that a free app would get more uptake than a paid one, but that would come at a cost to our existing community if spammers and trolls were even a small percentage of the uptake. We think that $4.99 is enough of a hurdle to ward off casual downloaders with questionable intentions.

It is probably also worth mentioning that while the app brings convenience and the ability to upload photos directly from the iPhone, it does not offer anything that you can’t do already (for free) using YLF in your web browser.

Brought to You by the YLF Village

Our good friend Morgan Belford did all the iPhone programming. I’ve been making software for a couple of decades, but no project has been as close to my heart as YLF. So it was pretty scary getting another programmer involved. It turned out to be an absolute pleasure and so much fun to have someone else join me and Angie to define a new part of YLF. Most of all, I need to thank Morgan for being incredibly patient with my constant design tweaks. We’re all looking forward to working together on lots more mobile goodness for YLF.

Of course, there are many other people helping us to define the future here at YLF — we have a constant stream of great input from the forum. The ability to post pictures from the dressing room for rapid feedback is a feature that several people have requested (I think forum member Maya was the first) and we’re so glad to finally bring it to life.

Last, but not least, a small group of YLF’ers with iPhones helped us to test the app. Thank you, ladies!

Please let us know if you experience any difficulties. You can comment below, post on the forum, send us a private message or use the contact form. We’re here to help. For a little more information on the app itself, check out its page in the backstage area. As always, feedback of all shapes and sizes is very welcome.

Enjoy!