Bonfyre Review

Sharing one's life and events with friends while still remaining privacy conscious is a common plight for many regular users of social networking tools. Even more so for those users with young families to watch out for. Bonfyre is one such app that sets out to make things simpler.

Offering the option of either setting up an unique log in or logging in via Facebook, the way is paved towards a simple set up process. I found it more useful to sign up via Facebook, purely because then I could invite friends and family into my private Bonfyre rather than relying upon SMS texts.

Sharing content is then done through creating individual Bonfyres, according to the occasion or reason to share. It takes a few moments to add each photo to the album before allowing users to participate in a group chat about them. It's simply done and, while the interface isn't the most attractive, easy for the most novice of users to figure it out. Delegating to my mother, a new iPhone owner and very much a novice, she didn't have any trouble figuring out what to do. It looks set to be a useful way to get family members to share their content, regardless of their location. Further usefulness comes in the form of being able to create an event through Bonfyre, adding a time, date and location to what's coming up.

This all ties into the memories section which is used to solely look at the photos of an event rather than the chat. It's a nice idea given that some events could lead to loads of photos being uploaded by various friends and family alongside plenty of frivolous chatting.

Bonfyre certainly has nice ideas behind it, but admittedly, it is pretty plain to look at and a little basic. The content is easy to upload but there's no way of adding a theme to an event which would have been all the better. Capturing memories is great but it'd be nice to add more context, such as a description of an event or tags. The lack of video uploading functionality is also sorely missed. Bonfyre has the potential but it's not quite a hit yet.