The history of social media platforms is littered with apps that had their moment before disappearing. BeReal, the 2022 favorite that required users to post only once a day at a random time, has lost momentum, according to Gen Z. Dispo, a photo-sharing platform inspired by disposable cameras, briefly made headlines in 2021 And in 2015 there it was didwhich was marketed as an online space for sharing everyday life as it is.
Now there’s a new contender: Lapse, a photography app with the motto “friends, not followers.” It was launched in 2021 but, after a reissue, it shot to number 2 in the United States on the Free Apple App Store Chart.
Like Dispo, Lapse encourages people to take photos like they did in the analog era, when disposable cameras were all the rage. Users take photos and “reveal” them in the app. When the photos are ready, several hours later, those who took them can decide whether they want to post them to their Lapse friends or archive them for private viewing.
All photos posted to Lapse must be taken in the app and cannot be modified in any way. There are no visible like counts. Instead, friends can react with emojis.
Lapse was founded by two brothers, Dan and Ben Silvertown, with GV financing (formerly Google Ventures). Their goal is to create a social media experience without the anxiety associated with trying to gain the approval of strangers. The app sits somewhere between a large platform, like TikTok, and the privacy of a group chat.
“We see it as a huge space in the middle that used to be occupied by other social networks and is now being left wide open,” Dan Silvertown said.
María Rendón, a 21-year-old receptionist in Woodbridge, Virginia, said she recently started using Lapse. “I think a lot of the new apps want to bring back that feeling that people just post and don’t worry about followers or likes or anything like that,” she said.
Rendon described herself as a frequent Instagram user (mostly for scrolling) who tried BeReal last year, only to quickly give up. She said she liked the way Lapse gave photos of her a cinematic look. Nostalgia, she said, is the appeal.
“When Instagram first came out, it was an image-based app,” he said. “That’s all it was. Now it has become many other things.”
Another Lapse user, Ann-Abele Blassingame, 22, cited nostalgia as part of the app’s appeal. As a graduate student in Greeley, Colorado, she uses Instagram as a “marketing tool” for her artwork and sees Lapse as a place to share photographs more informally.
Lapse is available by invitation only and requires newcomers to invite five people to join before they can start posting. Some people have been put off by this growth tactic. Andrew Lee, a 20-year-old student at Rutgers University, said he was wary of how users’ phone numbers could be used. Lapse’s website says the company does not sell user data.
Its rise up Apple’s app chart suggests the strategy is working. The big question is whether it will be able to stay warm. Neither Mrs. Rendón nor Mx. Blassingame was sure they would keep him for the long term.
Max. Blassingame said they had experienced some technical glitches with the app, which have since been fixed. They complained by commenting on Lapse’s Instagram account.
