Murge - Video Dialog

This video-creation app claims to be a tool for creative collaboration, but thanks to limited editing features, unmonitored content, and loads of underage users, it's neither fun nor safe. These days it seems everyone's making a video-creation app, and the best ones offer a wide range of easy-to-use filters, visual and text effects, soundtracks, and decorative AR objects. Murge – Video Dialog doesn't offer these features. The app starts badly by being highly unintuitive and offering only a handful of tool-tips to teach you how to use it. And things go downhill from there.

Overall functionality is just bad. Browsing videos by hashtag isn't much fun; many basic hashtags don't exist at all, and the search functionality gives incorrect feedback, mistaking hashtag searches for user searches. Video creation isn't much fun either, since there's so little you can do. The app's scant filter and AR options don't make for much creativity, and choosing from the limited selection of obscure artist music clips is less than thrilling. Though the app claims you can "lock" Murges, thus stopping strangers from collaborating with you, there seems no actual way to do this, and no security controls to speak of, beyond the ability to report another user. What does work is the location tracking. This, plus the capacity to send private Murges, and the fact that every third video is created by girls clearly under the 13+ age minimum, equals a big red flag for parents. The good news is the app's community is small and thus far, video content appears relatively free of bad language and suggestive or violent content. Still, that hardly makes up for the app's poor functionality, unintuitive interface, and limited features. All in all, this is one collaborative tool you and your kids can do without.