Earlier today, a new app being built by the folks in Redmond was uncovered and it is called Flow. Unlike the usual leaks, this one came with a bit more information than the typical bits we see around the web.
If you take a look at the image at the top, you can see the description that kicked off the conversation about the app and as it shows, it"s a way to have rapid email conversation on your phone with people you talk to frequently. Based on the picture, we can see that it is a way to have a conversation with only an email address.
In an effort to learn more, we pinged a few sources at Microsoft who provided a little more insight about the app.
Flow is still early in development and as the description says, this is indeed a way to have a quick conversation with anyone and you only need their email address. The app works with more than Outlook as well, currently you can use a Gmail email account too; our sources did not agree on what was powering the backend, it could be IMAP or POP3.
?The interface of the app looks like a traditional chat application and at this time supports group chat and sending of pictures too; video chat is not supported at this time.
The service could be described as a micro email chat application as it using email and the existing infrastructure to power the conversations; it"s platform agnostic IM via email. The goal is to reduce the friction and time spent with email but at the same time, not lose the convenience of the service and infrastructure used by billions of consumers.
No word on when the tool will be available to those outside of Microsoft nor if it will come to other platforms but as we learn more, we will let you know.
Image Credit: h0x0d