Poparazzi photo sharing app shuts down

Poparazzi, the social photo-sharing app that hit the top of the App Store in 2021, is shutting down. The company announced the news via a Medium blog April 28, adding the users had until June 30, 2023 to download their content. Last year, Poparazzi’s founders at TTYL Inc. said the app had grown to 5+ million total installs and confirmed its raise of $15 million in Series A funding, according to TechCrunch. At that time (mid-2022), the company founders Alex Ma and  Austen Ma, said they had a two-year runway.

Alex Ma’s post is below:

Our journey to Poparazzi started 4 years ago with a simple goal: to connect people authentically. We were inspired to build something different that would counter-balance the growing anxieties around social media. What began as a weekend hustle turned into something much bigger that we ever could have imagined. Along the way, millions of people joined us in building a more authentic, honest online community — one that lightened up the pressures of social media and celebrated our friendships.

Today, we’re announcing that Poparazzi is being discontinued and the app will no longer be available for use. If you’d like to download your content, please do so in the app before June 30th, 2023.

We’ve been incredibly blessed to work with an amazing team of passionate designers, engineers, and marketers to help bring this movement to life. And none of this would have been possible without the backing from the most supportive, world-class group of investors.

To our community, we are so grateful for the support and belief that 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.

The news of the Poparazzi shutdown also comes on the back of numerous media reports about the decline of another high-flying social photo-sharing app: BeReal. The Guardian’s Ysabel Gerrard write’s BeReal’s active daily users more than halved between October 2022 and March 2023, down from 20 million to 6 million.

“Its expected demise not only forces us to ask how ‘authentic’ a photo-sharing app can ever be, but whether we actually want the authenticity it sells,” writes Gerrard, who is a senior lecturer in digital communication at the University of Sheffield. “Released in 2020, BeReal prompts users at a random time each day to take one photo from their normal smartphone camera to capture their surroundings, and the other from their selfie camera, usually to reveal their face. Like many social apps, the photos are available to your ‘friends’ list, but only users who post their own photos can view others, cleverly cementing BeReal’s place in your daily routine.”