Over the years we've had new emmerging apps try to compete with the big sharks of the social media bubble. We've seen Instagram get bought out by Facebook when having only 17 employees, we've seen Dispo (previously David Dobrik's app) come out and try to imitate disposable cameras.... And now, we have Poparrazi.











The founders of Poparrazi started their app journey by creating an audio app based app called TTYL, which served as the skeleton for Clubhouse to copy (according to Forbes). TTYL didn't do very well after Clubhouse launched and tried to find something that had a better shot at succeeding. During their research they must of found their goldmine and pains to which they owe the success of their app, which is people wanting more authenticity. However they didn't think to just solve this problem and provide value, their solution comes with a twist.

The founders decided to embark on a new project that had much better timing. The founders commendably took the stage and gave the all-very-familiar Silicon Valley shpiel on "we want to help the world be a better place and make a positive impact", before totally realising an app with some very questionable UX tactics. Their audience is primarily college students and high schoolers and they seem to be pulling users from Tiktok. They essentially based their app off the Instagram tagging feature, in order to give people less control over curating their profile and keeping things authentic. The premise of the app is a sort of anti Instagram rebellion, that lets you have a social networking app where only your friends can post photos of yours onto your feed. In other words, your friends become your paparazzi, and you can't control how your profile is perceived.











As the bigger Sharks like Facebook begin to test retracting their Like count features and focus more on stories to give a more of authentic feel, Poparazzi began their marketing campaign. Just shortly after, in May 2021 the app hit the top of the app store downloads by carefully executing growth strategies that ensure a rocket ship-style launch. 

During the on-boarding process you get a screen that is full of movement and buzz which it makes your phone vibrate (don't bother making a profile, it's nearly impossible to remove). This high excitement screen starts hyping you to start exploring you app comes at the perfect timing for the next step - the data grab.












The app presents you with a screen that asks for access to your camera, contacts book and for permission to send notifications. The app DEMANDS a full address book upload, which is unnecessary in terms of the app's usability. It basically duplicates a copy of your phone book on to the app which could potentially hurt many users. Many people, women especially, leverage the phone's blocking feature to prevent messages or calls from stalkers or crazy exes. However in this app this phonebook upload automatically pairs you with the people from you contacts (paired up with the social anxiety it later imposes on you to get more posts quick, leveraging taking of the "approve tag" feature). This gives such harassers access to post unwanted pictures on these user's profiles.

As you complete permission to giving access to your phone book (or don't) you get a green check, which may confuse you into thinking you gave your address book even if you didn't. In addition the app is very much written to target the younger generations who won't pick up on this unnecessary nuance and the app uses the word "literally" in its microcopy. 









They have an agressive strategy to pull users from Snapchat as well, which they introduce to you after showing you a very demoralising blank slate of a profile. Talk about FOMO, what if you make a profile and don't have people constantly taking pics of you?

If you deny the address book upload you're met with a pop-up message that makes you feel even worse as a user.












A user's profile will remain bare until someone else uploads a photo of them or leverages the SnapKit integration will lets you essentially beg for tags over Snapchat (oh Snapchat, is this how you choose to stay in the game?). The app also has two modes in which you have to approve photo tags or not for them to appear on your profile. After realizing how uncommon it is for people to post photos of you on their profile, users will start leaning to breaking down that barrier, which invites a whole lot of abuse in itself. Social media has already caused a plague of social anxiety amongst teens and in different ways and also on celebrities. The thought of people standing somewhere and snapping your pic is already so Black Mirror as it is, but this app as basically a feature based app which makes them desperate to either provide good content or revert to bad manipulation. 

Another growth hack which is used is the "Top Poparazzi" section that incentivises best friends to keep posting photo streaks of each other. If you follow and then unfollow a user, you both can still post to each others profiles, although the clear sign that there is some lack of interest for those two people to stay in touch.

The app is a cash grab which benefits off understanding users and giving them something they want with a huge twist. Surely, Poparazzi will be looking at many scandals down the road, but their sole focus right now is just trying to grow. Many users struggle with deactivating their account, which is already a clear sign that it's not worth joining.

After speaking to some product managers in companies with similar styles of treating users, I've learned one big thing which I believe will ultimately cost them their user base in the future. Most of these companies will not openly recognize the rise of app creators with an already big following, or needing to migrate the influencers themselves to their apps. Truth be told that if Poparazzi was David Dobrik's app, and not Dispo, it probably would have done really well. As Mr. Beast goes into the realm of gaming with Beast Games, I believe more online influencers will continue to roll out different apps and have much more success than any of these emerging "one feature only" apps ever will. 

At the end of the day though, an average of 620 new apps are released to the app store in a single day. I guess we will just have to wait how this app's journey pans out.