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Tech

Front and Back Photo App Frontback Is Dead

Rest in peace || ecaep ni tseR
Screenshot by Clinton Nguyen

What's the half-life for photo apps that aren't Instagram or Snapchat nowadays? A year? Two years? Anyway, here's the news: Frontback, a photo-sharing app whose gimmick is to get users to take a selfie AND a back-facing photo at the same time, will shut down August 15 after a two-year run. . Photos will be downloadable until September 15—If you were a user, you can download the photos you've taken through the app by entering your username on Frontback's homepage.

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"This was a fresh idea and truly the heart of our vision, a concept that's seeing massive adoption today. Unfortunately, Frontback is not the winner," Frontback co-founder Frédéric della Faille wrote.

The app's shutdown raises questions of what it takes to penetrate a saturated market of photo apps. For Frontback, originality wasn't enough to keep it afloat, but what made Snapchat an outlier in a market that looked just as competitive?

Maybe all the pieces simply have to fall in place. Seems like that simply didn't happen for Frontback.