While major social apps are optimizing for maximum engagement using algorithmic feeds and personalized content recommendations, Retro wants to go in the opposite direction. The company is launching a new feature called Journal. A flexible way to share photos with your favorite people and visually record what's important in your life. Therefore, this feature can be used as something similar to a shared photo album, or it can be used to store personal records.
yes i know. Photo sharing is nothing new. Many have tried, but most have failed. Marissa Mayer's latest effort, an app called Sunshine, also raises questions. But given the history of the founding team, it's important to focus on Retro. This relatively new social app was created by former Instagram team members Nathan Sharp and Ryan Olson. They played a key role in delivering groundbreaking features such as Stories.
Retro focuses on photos and videos from loved ones and can quickly become a must-have for long-distance friends, extended family, and anyone who likes to carefully curate their photos to choose the best ones. We are gradually rolling out new features. From their camera roll.
Retro's main feature is a way to share your most important photos from the past week with your favorite people. Once you start adding photos, you'll create a story for the week that your friends can check out. But that only works if your social graph is a perfect replica of the most important people in your life. That's why people end up spending quality time together and then just post tons of photos in WhatsApp groups or iMessage threads.
Retro's answer to this use case is the journal. A new and flexible way to share photos in groups. Co-founder and CEO Nathan Sharp likens the feature to “his photo-first WhatsApp group.”
Released last summer, Retro still hasn't gotten much attention. Highly rated by product designers interested in social mobile apps. However, it has not become a mainstream app. The startup is still shipping features in hopes of unleashing what Sharp calls a “product-led growth engine.”
“The first challenge right now is to build a product that's perfect for catching up with family and friends. And the second part is making it easy for family and friends to be a part of it. … I think journals are a big part of that,” he told TechCrunch. “As social apps they can't really separate the two tasks. But what they can do is focus on the features that provide a high level of utility to the group of people that trigger them.”
You can use your diary to curate photos around specific topics. For example, creating a family diary for each child will free you from the clutter of a regular photo library and allow you to quickly and easily review previous photos of your children. It's a way to foster that unique and personal bond.
You can also keep a diary with your partner and share the important moments you spent together without spamming all your friends with Retro. Or you can create a diary of your recent weekend trip so everyone can add and share photos without having to add you as a friend in the app.
Image credit: Retro
“One of my favorite things I've made is for Valentine's Day. I made it for my wife, just a picture of the two of us. And then I went back about 10 years, and we… We've been together for 10 years,” said co-founder and CTO Ryan Olson. “Now, if I have a photo of the two of us, I just add it to it. It's fun to have these kinds of creatures together.”
Some people may use diaries for personal projects or hobbies. For example, if you love woodworking and want to track your progress, you can create a journal specifically for furniture making, with just you as the unique journal member.
“Photojournals are like a great form for reviewing, looking back on, and reflecting on something that grows very subtly over time, but over a long period of time.” said Sharp.
This new feature could help raise awareness for Retro if the startup can get people to use the journal during real-life events. For example, a scenario where the host leaves disposable cameras on the table for guests to take photos to pool and share later.
“If you want to collect photos from an event, we created this really beautiful QR code that you can save to your camera roll or print,” Sharp said. “It's as simple as inserting a QR code and saying, 'If you're attending this dinner, please share all your photos.'”
This feature also has a viral aspect, as you can share your journal outside of Retro. The app allows you to generate a public link and share it on Instagram Stories or elsewhere online. No need to install an app to view photos. So some people might use it to share their wedding photos, for example.
Building consumer social apps requires a lot of experimentation, and Journal is one of those experiments. As people discover the app by clicking on the public links of these shared albums, it could potentially become a product-driven growth engine for Retro. only time will tell.