Silicon Valley's Social App and Teen Obsession

The latest frothy app to receive the “next big thing” treatment is Poparazzi, an app that allegedly is blowing up because it doesn’t let you use the front-facing camera on your phone.

Do you remember Dispo? Apparently it was going to be the Future Of Tech, and the Future of Photo Sharing as recently as February.

It’s a social network that doesn’t show you follower counts, doesn’t let you edit pictures, it automatically follows everyone in your phone book, and I dunno, it’s an app. Josh Constine wrote about it with his trademark froth, suggesting that “the future of social is multiplayer,” a statement that - and I say this respecting Josh otherwise - means ... See more

Lasting consumer apps are extremely hard to sustain because they’re inevitably built for such a wide swath of people that marketing, attracting and sticking with any particular demographic is difficult, let alone almost every single one.

Poparazzi seems to lack any of the hallmarks of anything lasting. There is nothing new to the mode, nothing that cannot be done elsewhere, nothing truly unique or interesting. Restricting what you can do in a social network works with the length of a video, but it doesn’t really work with photos. It’s just another app that will be gone in a few mon... See more