Dispo, a new photo sharing application that mimics the experience of using a disposable camera, is taking off. People are crying out for invitations to test the beta. Early users are praising their social characteristics. And investors are betting heavily on their future.
In the app, users frame the photos using a small rectangular viewfinder. There are no editing tools or subtitles; when the images “unfold” – that is, they appear on your phone at 9 am the next day – you get what you get. Several people can take pictures on the same roll, as can happen with a real disposable camera at a party.
“When I used to go to parties with my friends, they had disposable cameras all over the house and encouraged people to take pictures at night,” said David Dobrik, YouTube star and founder of the app. “In the morning, they would collect all the cameras and look at the footage and be like, ‘What happened last night?’
He and his friends loved the luck of going through fleeting and forgotten moments. “It would be like the end of ‘The Hangover’ every morning,” said Dobrik, 24. He started posting his revealed photos to a dedicated Instagram account in June 2019 and quickly gained millions of followers. Other influencers and celebrities, including Tana Mongeau and Gigi Hadid, soon started their own “disposable” accounts; his fans followed suit.
Noticing a trend, Dobrik sought to recreate the digital disposable camera experience as an antidote to the obsession with getting the perfect shot. “You never looked at the photo, you never checked the lighting,” he said of using disposables. “You just went on with your day and, in the morning, you had to relive it.”
In December 2019, he launched a photo app called David’s Disposable, through which people could take retro-looking photos that they “developed” overnight. His initial follow-up suggested that the model had greater potential. Then, over the course of a year, it was developed on Dispo, a complete social network that started beta testing with the public last Friday.
Although the latest version of Dispo has only been available to the public for less than a week, it is already generating buzz. The app rose in the ranking on the Apple App Store this week. Discussion rooms with the theme Dispo appeared in the Clubhouse. YouTubers are sharing comments, tips for booking invitations and growth hacks. Just as VSCO gave birth to the VSCO girl, Dispo produced a “Dispo boys” stable. Some photos from Dispo even reached the online art market as NFTs, or “non-fungible tokens”.
Beta users of the app praised their restriction. “I think the photos are simpler,” said Goldie Chan, 38, founder of Warm Robots, a Los Angeles-based social strategy agency. “Apps like Clubhouse are very loud, literally. When you have something like Dispo or VSCO, you are just taking pictures. You can take a moment in time and let it go. “
This shift in highly cured feeds has been underway for several years. In 2019, the rise of “identifiable” YouTubers like Emma Chamberlain helped create a silly and irreverent editing style that became the standard for Generation Z. And throughout 2020, TikTok spawned a new wave of more focused creators. in personality than in perfection.
“While Instagram filters in 2011 made everyone beautiful, TikTok filters in 2021 made everyone look ugly,” wrote Rex Woodbury, director of Index Ventures recently. “And where Instagram has provided filters to help improve the appearance of your bad photos, Dispo purposely makes your good photos look worse.”
Anyha Garcia, a 31-year-old housewife from Utah, started using Dispo a week ago. She is a fan of its simplicity. “I don’t have to sit and cut or edit,” she said. “I take a picture, and I hope it ends. I can go back and look at it later, instead of looking now and making those adjustments or worrying about taking 10 to 12 more pictures of what I’m trying to take. “
People also emphasized the collaboration of the application. “Insta made everyone a general photographer. Dispo makes you a photographer with a purpose, ”said Terry O’Neal, 31, a brand manager in Los Angeles who uses the app. He created several camera rolls with colorful themes and asked other users to help him find objects that fit each theme. “This is where community building is, everyone looking for the same thing through their own lenses,” he said.
“Dispo’s big difference is collaborative roles,” said Luke Yun, 31, director of social media in Los Angeles. “People are finding ways to be creative together. It’s like an innate competition to beat each other on these community lists that I haven’t seen on any social network before. “
Although the Dispo photos do not have captions, the comment sections of the collaborative camera rollers can be animated. There are rolls in which people are asked to guess the story behind each photo or to comment with the lyrics of the songs they think match the mood of an image. Another scroll features photos of handwritten notes designed to start a conversation.
The social network has avoided the culture of spam growth hacking that often arises in early-stage apps, and Easter eggs on your screen scoff at the obsession with increasing someone’s metrics. Dobrik, for example, seems to have 69 million followers and photos and 420 likes on Dispo.
However, small collectives of creators emerged. “I created a list called Dispo Hype Group, where we were adding everyone and accepting everyone’s invitation,” said Ms. Garcia. The group, which includes about 40 people, hopes to organize an IRL meeting when it is safe to do so.
Dispo has already started to expand internationally, mainly in Japan, where the company plans to open an office. Although currently a company with just eight people, the start-up’s rapid expansion has made it an attractive target for venture capitalists.
In an initial financing round in October, led by Seven Seven Six, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Dispo raised $ 4 million. This week, the company raised $ 20 million in a $ 200 million valuation in a Series A financing round led by Spark Capital, according to Axios. Dispo also held talks with other major venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Benchmark, according to the information.
As the app continues to grow, Dispo leaders have expressed a commitment to ensuring that the app remains a safe and open space for its users. “Trust and security is incredibly important to us and will be a relentless focus,” said Daniel Liss, 32, Dispo’s CEO “Saying that we don’t have a position on trust and security is not good enough. For our community and shareholders, it is unacceptable. “
“It is a position for which I am hiring before any investor asks me about it, because it is important to me, David and our team,” he added.
Although there is always competition and copies, Dobrik believes that what Dispo offers is something that photo filters cannot replicate.
“When you see a disposable photo, you know it is real and it was not made or assembled,” he said. “It just happened and was captured. That’s what makes it so exciting. “