Taking a new approach to the exploding messaging app field, React Messenger captures users’ facial expressions, essentially affixing a selfie with every message sent.





“Our take is, emoticons and stickers are a way to convey the body language and emotion that’s stripped off inside text-based communication,” React cofounder Pedro Alejandro Wunderlich told Fast Company. “Why don’t we create an app that brings real-time facial expressions into texting?”

In the two weeks since its launch, Wunderlich said the iPhone app has been downloaded 73,000 times, with 65,000 active users. Cumulatively, they’ve sent 2 million messages (and selfies), spending an average of half an hour each day chatting on React.

Based in Los Angeles, Wunderlich and his cofounder Andres Canella spent a year working on React, funding it with the profits from their previous project, an alarm clock app called Wake N Shake.