Poparazzi, the once-hot photo-sharing app that hit the top of the App Store in 2021, has shut down. Announcing the news via a Medium blog late last week, the company informed users that the app would be shutting down and users would have until June 30, 2023 to download content. their own. Last year, the Poparazzi founders at TTYL Inc. The app has grown to over 5 million installs in total and confirmed to have raised $15 million in Series A funding.
Although at the time Poparazzi felt like an overnight sensation, co-founder and CEO Alex Ma and his brother, co-founder Austen Ma, spent three years developing the apps and focusing on achieving the success they had with launching Poparazzi. In a 2022 interview with TechCrunch, Alex said that Poparrazi was actually the 11th or 12th app created through those efforts. Among them was the audio social network, TTYL, a kind of “Clubhouse for Friends”, after which their company is also named.
However, Poparrazi made a lot of noise soon after its release, as it climbed to number one on the App Store. The concept behind the app was a photo-sharing focused social network that basically took Instagram’s tagging feature and turned it into a complete experience. On Poparazzi, users can tag their friends but not post photos of themselves. The idea was that this would create a more authentic kind of social network, because the photos wouldn’t necessarily be the polished, perfected ones that populate Instagram, but rather the casual moments that make up people’s real lives.
Image credits: Poparazzi
Last June, the company confirmed a $15 million Series A increase led by Benchmark’s Sarah Tavel, which beat out a16z for the deal. The startup had previously raised $2 million in seed funding, led by Floodgate, in a round that included other investors like SV Angel, Shrug Capital, and several angels. At the time, Poparazzi said his money would give his 15-man team listed for over two years.
But soon there were signs that Poparazzi’s time might be up.
In August 2022, TechCrunch discovered that the team was now working on a new app, Made with Friends, which offered a twist on Poparazzi’s original concept of social networking profiles designed by a user’s friends. Instead, Made with Friends required its users to post all kinds of content to their friends’ profiles, not just photos. For example, they can post text content such as answers to questions or prompts, as well as videos. The app was available as a pre-release at the time, but has since been removed from the App Store sometime after March 26 of this year, app intelligence firm Apptopia confirmed to TechCrunch.
The company noted that the use of Poparrazi also slowed after launch. It estimated that there were 6.2 million lifetime app installs, but now it only has approximately 2,000 to 3,000 monthly active users (MAUs) after hitting a high of 4 million MAU previously.
In his blog post, Poparrazi did not confirm his future plans, if any, only pointing to the impending closure and thanking his community and supporters.
“None of this would have been possible without the support of the most supportive and world-class group of investors,” Alex Ma wrote, in the announcement. “For our community, we are So grateful for the support and faith you have shown us throughout our journey. Your enthusiasm and passion for Poparazzi has been the driving force behind everything we’ve done. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”
TTYL Inc. comment.