On May 24, the Poparazzi photo-sharing app took first place in the US App Store, on the first day of its official launch. This happened thanks to a waiting list of 500 thousand users, which the developers have gained thanks to videos on TikTok.
In Poparazzi, a user profile is collected from photos taken by other people. So the creators of the service want to make a “safe” and less self-centered social network.
Social network with a “healthy” atmosphere. No filters or comments
As conceived by the creators of the application, users should take pictures only of other people, to be “paparazzi” for their friends. The first in the profile are photographs taken by other people, and in the background are thse taken by the user.
Such a concept should “facilitate the exchange of real photographs between friends” and “make social networks less self-centered and more focused on loved ones,” the Protocol’s developers were quoted as saying.
Over the past decade, our feeds have been increasingly filled with edited, seemingly flawless photographs. When we write about ourselves, we naturally want to share only the most exciting moments of our lives. We edit photos and write witty captions, trying to present ourselves in the best possible light.
As a result, this is a competition for attention in which no one wins. The more we scroll through the tapes, the more it seems to us that we are falling short. And so in a circle.
But life consists of many imperfect and ideal moments that are worth capturing and sharing. We created Poparazzi to save you the hassle of being perfect by focusing on the people you are with.
The app has other features that aim to create a healthier social media experience:
- Photos cannot be edited before publishing.
- No comments – you can react with emoji.
- No signatures or hashtags.
- Users do not see the number of each other’s subscribers, but they see the number of pops – photos that a person has visited.
- There is no way to switch to the front camera.
Only subscribed users can post a photo or a series of GIFs in their profile. Any photo taken by another person can be removed from your account. It is not specified whether the photo will be saved in the profile of the author of the photo.
The social network also allows you to close your account. In this case, only approved accounts will be able to tag the user in photos.
The application is actively trying to spread inf abut itself. When you upload a photo of a person who is not on the social network, but is in the contacts of the author of the photo, Poparazzi sends them a message that his photo has been published.
At the registration stage, as well as in the search and notification tabs, the service offers to send an invitation to friends, having previously requested access to contacts. However, the proposed list of contacts may also include those users who are already in the application.
Promotion on TikTok
Poparazzi is publicly available, but so far only for iOS. The service team is working on a version for Android, but does not give exact dates.
The team has been testing the service for several months, notes NIX Solutions. For this, the developers gained 10 thousand users in a few days on TikTok, as it is used by the main audience of Poparazzi, writes Connor Van Ooyen, co-founder of New Social Investing Company.
The first video in the official Poparazzi account was released on February 3, 2021; on February 8, the team thanked users for downloading the beta version of the application.
By the time of the official launch, Poparazzi had received 500 thousand applications for pre-installation. All this time, the service continued to be promoted on TikTok. The team shot videos in the style of the social network, compared Poparazzi to Instagram and focused on the “healthy” atmosphere.
The service’s videos have gained tens of thousands of views, with a maximum of 1.1 million.