About

theTopView

A video app built around quoting moments instead of resharing posts.

The idea

Sharing a video is a blunt gesture. You pass on the whole thing, and whatever it was that made you want to pass it on — a sentence, a frame, four seconds in the middle — is left for the next person to go and find. Most of the time they do not, and the thing you actually meant is lost in transit.

theTopView is built the other way round. You choose the moment first, and what you publish is that moment: a clip between two timestamps, a still frame, a comment somebody wrote, a line of speech. It is called a reTop, the original post stays attached underneath it, and your own words are kept separate from the thing you are quoting. That last part is what makes a quote worth trusting.

A reTop can be reTopped in turn, which is how a conversation forms: each layer keeps the thing it is responding to attached to it, so a chain three deep is still readable by someone arriving at the end of it. The guide to reTops explains the five kinds and when each one is the right one.

Where it runs

theTopView is an app for iOS and Android, and this website is the same client in a browser — the same feeds, profiles, players and settings, so a link someone sends you opens whether or not you have installed anything.

Who makes it

theTopView is built and run by an independent developer in Italy, not by a company with a press office. That has consequences worth stating plainly: decisions about the product are made by one person, support is answered by that same person, and the roadmap is what one person can actually build rather than what sounds impressive.

It also means the privacy position is simple. The data the app holds is what it needs to show you the app, it is covered by the GDPR because that is the law here, and the privacy policy is written to be read rather than to be survived.

Getting in touch

Support, bug reports, press, and anything about your own data: the contact page has the addresses and what to expect from each.