Phhhoto, is an app being described as an “instant animated camera”, been used by over 10 million people will shut down because it couldn’t “make enough money to keep the company running”.
According to reports, Instagram’s Boomerang is a copycat of the app that posed stiff competition that Phhhoto could not deal with.
“Our commitment to creativity and camera culture was relentless, but we didn’t grow fast enough to compete,” explained the company in a post on its website.
The company said,
“Over the next few days, key aspects of the app will stop working. Hour by hour, feature by feature, Phhhoto will go offline until nothing is left. You’ll still be able to keep your app and shoot moving pictures — but you’ll need to post them elsewhere,”
The website lets its users take moving pictures that it describes as “quicker than video, better than stills”, in addition, to add filters and music to them. The app maker said on this platform over 400 million images were created.
TechCrunch quoted co-founder Champ Bennett as saying the company knew Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s co-founder, and his product team were “quietly using Phhhoto almost a year before Boomerang was released.”
Co-founder Champ Bennett reportedly said,
“You have to give massive respect to anyone at their scale, but I’m not sure Instagram has a creative bone in their entire body. That’s a weakness we tried to exploit,”
The report also added parent company Hypno, that will focus on its original business of physical photobooths for events.
