Alternative Anti-Selfie Platforms
Alternative’ social media platforms like Poparazzi, Made With Friends, Gas and Yubo are targeting the younger crowd – primarily high schoolers – by challenging the notion that big tech is no longer the best place to connect with your real-life friends. Social livestreaming app Yubo, for example, is being coined the next big thing since raising £57M in venture capital to date.
Unlike every other social app on the market, these apps are not for performative social media since you cannot post anything about yourself.
Source: Tech Crunch, Business Insider
These platforms are different in the sense that the purpose is not to centre content around yourself and instead aims to put more attention on the people you’re physically with, and the people that are in your life.
Poparazzi allows users to create social profiles for photo-sharing purposes, but only your friends are allowed to post photos to them; essentially like Instagram but it doesn’t let people post photos of themselves. Most of its users are U.S. based with 75% of its users between the ages of 14 and 18 and 95% of users are between 14 and 21.
Made With Friends, made by the brains of Poparazzi, expands on the Poporazzi concept by sending users prompts to post to friends’ profiles. This new platform provides opportunities to post content different to the norm, including text-based content like answers to questions or prompts, as well as photos and videos.
Yubo might be then next big thing since raising £57M – this social livestreaming app is helping Gen Z find new friends through live streaming and authentic interactions based on their own interests. The difference with this social app is you can’t follow other users and you can’t like content. With the number of hours spent in live rooms increasing 400% YOY, it is no surprise that Yubo has seen an increase in users from 25 million in December 2021 to now over 40 million today.