Introduction:
The photo-sharing app Lapse, which earlier this year growth-hacked its way to the top of the App Store, is beginning to lose its appeal. The app, Lapse which required users to invite friends to access—a strategy that the recently released social app ID by Amo also employs—saw early success with this strategy of “going viral.”
The software rose from No. 118 Overall to No. 1 in the U.S. software Store this September. Still, a recent study demonstrates that growth techniques are insufficient to maintain an app. Lapse’s downloads have been declining over the past two months, and they have already dropped by up to 70% from their peak in October.
Growth hacking your way to the top of the App Store isn’t a guarantee for sustained success unless your product can sustain its new customers over time, according to statistics from app intelligence firm Appfigures.
Co-founders Dan and Ben Silvertown, who are brothers, claimed that Lapse was initially introduced in 2021 to emulate the experience of a point-and-shoot camera, in which users would capture images but would have to wait to view them. Other photo applications, including Dispo and Later Cam, have experimented with this artificial limitation in the past.
However, Lapse’s designers changed course after realizing that users were mostly using the app as a photo journal. The updated Lapse app kept the trick of “developing” its images at random points during the day, but it shifted its emphasis to arranging images into albums and building user profiles with monthly photo dumps, following the pattern of more popular applications like Instagram.
Though Lapse’s shift was not always well accepted, its development was fueled by TikTok commercials and eventually its invite process. Better Tomorrow Ventures partner Sheel Mohnot commented on X, saying, “I felt dirty,” about the app’s invite-only program. Lapse “got to the top of the App Store on a pyramid scheme,” he continued. Some others described this kind of onboarding as “annoying,” claiming that it made them “spam” their friends.
Lapse, the Photo App that forced Users to Invite Friends:
Lapse, the Photo App that forced Users to Invite Friends [Source of Image: Techcrunch.com]
Yet, Lapse held its leading position for some time. Appfigures reported that at the start of September, Lapse was averaging just 8,000 downloads per day, but by the month’s end, this figure surged to 210,000 daily downloads. Moreover, it ascended to the pinnacle of the U.S. App Store’s download rankings, maintaining a steady position within the top 5. By October, its daily downloads reached a peak of 218,000 in a single day. However, its fortunes took a turn for the worse thereafter.
Despite Lapse acquiring new users, its downloads plummeted by 70% from the recent peak, dwindling to a mere 63,000 per day. Specifically, on Friday, Nov. 24, the count dropped further to 44,738. Lapse hasn’t addressed requests for comments regarding this data, which surfaced publicly last week.
This pattern aligns with similar trends seen in apps such as Dispo and Paparazzi. The latter experienced immense popularity with over 5 million downloads upon its launch but eventually ceased operations earlier this year due to waning user traction.
Furthermore, BeReal was identified by analytics company Similarweb as another photo app that is losing traction in the United States. The company reported a fall in monthly users from 3.7 million in November 2022 to 3 million in August. BeReal, however, shot back at that portrayal, claiming that it still has over 25 million active users globally, leaving out any information on usage in the United States.
In any case, regardless of how rapidly they’ve ascended to the top of the App Store, it does appear to be challenging for newcomers in the social or social photo app area to sustain their momentum. A similar tendency may already be in motion, despite the excitement around ID by Amo, a peculiar new software that blends social networking and the collage-making features of something like Pinterest’s Shuffles.
According to Appfigures’ data, ID, which also required users to invite friends to log in, has suffered a decline in installs since its launch. I’ll have more on that one soon.
