Shine: Photo Messaging

Shine is an AI-powered private social network designed to make connecting easier and relationships stronger—all through the power of photos. Photo sharing becomes more powerful with AI and can bring people closer.
Shine’s features include:
INTRODUCING STREAMS, your WhatsApp for Photos.
We all share photos via messaging. The issue is that messaging was made for chatting, not photo sharing – so the photo experience is usually less than ideal – not full resolution, too many near duplicates, no easy gallery view. To optimize for photo-based chats, Shine now has streams, which are essentially group chats consisting entirely of photos. A stream could be for your family, a group trip, a classroom, a team, a night out, a dinner party and so on. They are like albums, but they can be infinite. They may span a few hours or span years. Streams also harness AI to organize and de-duplicate photos (finding the best one). They work great for events, parties and trips, but now the power of Shine’s curation, suggestions, and ease of sharing spans many other kinds of sharing too.
AI POWERED. Shine uses AI to make photo sharing easier and better.
■ FACIAL RECOGNITION. We’ve surveyed all the face recognition models so you can get the benefit of the best of what is available today. In a stream, Shine can find all the photos of a person easily. Shine can even suggest who might be in the photos using the profile pictures from your contacts. And, you can tag people and share with them in one smooth action. For those of you who love tagging, Shine even keeps count of how many faces you’ve tagged in total and displays it on your profile page.
■ AI CURATION. Shine’s AI curation is as powerful as ever, but now it’s even more useful. By using the power of AI, you don’t have to spend your time picking the “best” photo and remembering who to send it to. You can simply drop your photos into a stream and let Shine group near-duplicates, select a key photo, and suggest, based on facial recognition, who else you may want to share with or add to the stream. This works particularly well with “everyday” photos that may not be bound for Instagram glory, but are still something you want to share with your family or friends. This is where AI-powered private social networking comes in. It’s private because it’s just your family and friends.
■ SHAREWORTHY SUGGESTIONS. Suggestions are one of our most loved features. Shine users couldn’t get enough of them. We’ve enhanced our AI’s understanding of what is shareworthy and now, because of contacts and facial recognition, you can share those suggestions even more easily with exactly who you want to.
PRIVATE AND SOCIAL. Shine enables you to connect with friends privately and easily.
■ Request photos of yourself from friends. With your contacts and the power of facial recognition, we can find pictures of you that your friends have shared on Shine. Shine then suggests you request those photos from your friends.
■ PRIVATE. Most social networking feeds are filled with people you don’t even know. Shine is focused on helping you strengthen the relationships you already have. To do this well, we put privacy at the forefront. No photos are shared from your phone without your explicit action. To learn more about how Sunshine as a company and Shine as a product approach your privacy, please read our privacy pledge.
■ EASY SHARING ACROSS PLATFORMS. Streams work well for many different size groups, but it’s particularly great for groups from ten to a few hundred people. One of the issues in these smaller groups is that you will almost certainly have users who aren’t on iOS. Shine has great experiences on several platforms and makes sharing across OSes seamless.
The updated Shine photos app is a new chapter for Sunshine. One we couldn’t be more excited about. Please try out Shine and give us feedback so we can improve.