The social network without selfies

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Poparazzi is a new photo-sharing app that, as its name suggests, invites its users to become “paparazzi” with their friends (and thus become photographers with them). Poparazzi bans taking selfies and makes using the front camera impossible. Thus, a personal profile can only be enriched thanks to the photos of the person who owns the profile that others have made, and the owner at most can decide to remove certain photos of himself that he does not want to see.

Poparazzi also has other characteristics: its photos do not contain comments, they cannot be “liked”, there are no comments and there are no number of followers. Referred to as the “moment application,” it is somewhat similar to a few months ago it was performed using the Clubhouse. And just as it was in the beginning for Clubhouse, too Poparazzi Currently available only for Apple devices.

Poparazzi was launched on May 24 by Austin and Alex Ma, two brothers under the age of thirty who actually tried it in 2019 with a voice app called I will talk to you later (From the English acronym “Talk to you later”, “We’ll hear from you later”). The idea behind TTYL was to create a digital space where users could communicate and talk to each other, in binary or even larger groups, with friends or other contacts who were online. TTYL did well and raised $ 2 million in investment, and partly anticipated what would become a Clubhouse: But it never worked.

On the other hand, Poparazzi did a lot better: in its early days she was Indeed, the most downloaded app from the US App Store we are talking His interest in some major companies and his valuation of more than $ 100 million.

In an article published in AverageThe so-called “little team behind Poparazzi” Foot The application as a kind of anti-Instagram interested in “preserving the authenticity of the moments spent with friends” after “the past decade” our message boards [digitali] It is full of apparent perfection and modified images. ” The article then says that “when we publish pictures of ourselves on the Internet, we understandably try to share the most exciting moments of our lives”, in “an attention contest where no one wins.” So the app presents itself as a place to “take the pressure off perfection”.

The quintessential self-reporting approach of many social networks has been referred and criticized again and again (not surprisingly accompanied by a steady growth in the number and quality of front-facing cameras for smartphones). Although it has always focused on profiles, with captured images to spark the curiosity of others, Poparazzi undoubtedly offers an innovative approach in its own way.

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In addition to its undoubted characteristics and interesting views, Poparazzi is being talked about – and will likely be talked about for a longer time – for privacy reasons. It is really easy to imagine the contexts and situations in which problems might arise due to someone taking a picture of another person without their permission and consent.

If it is true that the photographer can get a pre-check for posting on photos taken by contacts who are not friends with them, then it is also true that in the case of photos taken by friends, a notification is received when the photo is posted. Only then can you choose to remove it from your profile.

It can be said that now, on Facebook or Instagram, anyone can post a picture of whoever they want. The truth is that, according to the most people involved, with Poparazzi this side can be angry. In addition to this, the app has also received some criticism regarding privacy issues and the way in which, during registration, it restores all the contacts that the user has on his smartphone. However, these are problems that can be solved or at least mitigated in the coming days. Already now, in its instructions, the app Calling Users should carefully and respectfully post only photos that they are actually the authors of, without breaking any law and “treat everyone with respect”

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Josh Konstein, author of Newsletter on New Technology Trends, he wrote That “Poparazzi can symbolize a post-pandemic reunion insofar as the Clubhouse represents the physical distance between people during lockdowns.” Konstein appreciated the app for being collaborative (to get a lot of pictures of herself, others need to take a lot of pictures, and vice versa), for being light and cheerful and because it makes it impossible to edit photos or add strange photo effects, lends itself to quick and simple use as well.

The term “paparazzo” is also used in the United States, as the note makes clear, for example Song Posted by Lady Gaga. It is the so-called “author’s word”, that is, a new hadith by a certain author who has included in one of his works: in his film the life is Nice, Federico Fellini chose to call Paparazzo (actually invented the word) a character who was a pictorial. How He explains Site One word a day“The genesis of this name is uncertain and the fact that Fellini often enjoyed telling him in various ways does not help him see it clearly.”