Draft:Pawblish

Pawblish is a mobile only, social media and image sharing platform designed around pets. Registered users can share pictures and text updates about their pets. Users can also interact with content from other users in ways such as liking, commenting and favouriting. Currently, Pawblish is in an Open Beta while main development nears completion.

2022
Pawblish first became an idea on May 12th 2022 when its creator Ben, known online as OldYogurtPot, was bored and wanted something to do. At first, Ben only created simple UI designs for a then unnamed image sharing app. After the initial designs had been completed, Ben started work on programming the app in React Native, making few updates on the Pawblish Twitter. Ben would soon after buy the domain name pawblish.com and host a website that briefly outlined what Pawblish aimed to be. On July 26th 2022 Ben let a few close friends use a very basic version of Pawblish, providing feedback on how to improve the app. After a few months, a closed beta would open, allowing people to apply for Beta Testing.

2023 - Present
Pawblish started 2023 with its servers being upgraded in preparation for the upcoming beta. These upgrades took nearly a month longer than planned, leaving closed beta users unable to use the app. On March 1st 2023, Pawblish would start an open beta for iOS, gaining just 6 new users in one day. The number of new users and new updates would slowly increase over the next month until an open Android beta was released on April 20th. Since then, New updates continue to be released adding new features such as profile pictures, edit buttons and mentions. . An official release date has not yet been confirmed but rumours state that plans were made for a late 2023 release

Posts
Posts, the main type of content on Pawblish, are always publicly visible but users can opt out of their posts being shown to other users on the Explore Page. Posts on Pawblish contain one image in a 3:4 aspect ratio, an optional description and labels for each named pet in the post. Pet Labels are similar to tagged users in Instagram posts.

Updates
Updates are the secondary type of content on Pawblish intentended for small chunks of information about events currently happening, such as progress of pets at an award show or small discussions about a new pet product. Updates expire after 24 hours, deleting the original update and all comments linked to it.

Interactions
Users can interact with content on Pawblish in a few different ways. Some interaction methods are limited to Posts, such as liking and favouriting. Commenting is available for Posts, Updates and other Comments. Posts, Updates and Profiles can all be shared via links that open directly in the app. Users can also follow, block and mention other users. Following a user will include their posts in your home screen. Blocking a user will prevent both users interacting and seeing each other's posts. Mentioning users can be achieved by typing an @ symbol followed by a user's username, this embeds a link to their profile in the text and notifies the mentioned user.

Account Management
Pawblish has the standard customisable account information that other social media plaforms offer. Such as usernames, nicknames, profile pictures and bios. Pawblish also offers Profile Colours, where users can choose from a list of pre defined options to be the primary hue of their account. Other users will see this colour when visiting a profile and in place of profile pictures when a user has none.

Character Limits
Pawblish has different character limits for each form of content. Descriptions in posts have a limit of 150 characters, Updates and comments are limited at 250, account bios are limited to 200 characters, usernames have a max length of 15 characters and nicknames can be 20 characters. Each post can have 15 pet labels, each label being 20 characters in length.