Inside Facebook Stories’ quest for originality amidst 300M users

There’s a secret Facebook app called Blink. Built for employees only, it’s how the company tests out new video formats its hoping will become the next Boomerang or SuperZoom. They range from artsy Blur effects to a way even old Android phones can use Slo-Mo. One exciting format involves audio beat detection that syncs visual embellishments to songs playing in the background or added via the Music stickers that are  coming to Facebook Stories after debuting on Instagram.

“When we first formed the team . . . we brought in film makers and cinematographers to help the broader team understand the tropes around storytelling and filmmaking” says Dantley Davis, Facebook Stories’ Director Of Design. He knows those tropes himself, having spent seven years at Netflix leading the design of its apps and absorbing creative tricks from countless movies. He wants to democratize those effects once trapped inside expensive desktop editing software. “We’re working on formats to enable people to take the video they have and turn it into something special.”

For all the jabs about Facebook stealing Stories from Snapchat, it’s working hard to differentiate. That’s in part because there’s not much left to copy, and because it’s largely succeeded in conquering the prodigal startup that refused to be acquired. Snapchat’s user count shrank last quarter to 188 million daily users. Facebook’s versions continue to grow. After announcing in May that Facebook Stories had 150 million users, with Messenger citing 70 million last September, today the company revealed they have a combined 300 million daily users.

With the success of any product comes the mandate to monetize it. That push ended up pushing out the founders of Facebook acquisition WhatsApp, and encroachment on product decision making did the same to Instagram’s founders who this week announced they were resigning. Now the mandate has reached Facebook Stories which today opened up to advertisers globally. Facebook is even running “Stories School” programs to teach ad execs the visual language of ephemerality. As Stories sharing is predicted to surpass feed sharing in 2019, Facebook is counting on the ephemeral slideshows to sustain its ad revenue. Fears they wouldn’t lopped $120 billion off Facebook’s market cap this summer.

But to run ads you need viewers and that will require responses to questions that have dogged Facebook Stories since its debut in early 2017: Why do I need Stories here too when I already have Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status.

Facebook user experience research manager Liz Keneski

The answer may be creativity, but Facebook is taking a scientific approach to determining which creative tools to build. Liz Keneski is a user experience research manager at Facebook. She leads the investigative trips, internal testing, and focus groups that shape Facebook’s products. Keneski laid out the different types of research Facebook employs to go from vague idea to polished launch.

Foundational Research – “This is the really future looking research. It’s not necessarily about any specific products but trying to understand people’s needs.”

Contextual Inquiry – “People are kind enough to invite us into their homes and talk with us about how they use technology.” Sometimes Facebook does “street intercepts” where they find people in public and spend five minutes watching and discussing how they use their phone. It also conducts “diary studies” where people journal about how they spend their time with tech.

Descriptive Research – “When we’re exploring a defined product space”, this lets Facebook get feedback on exactly what users would want a new feature to do.

Participatory Design – “It’s kind of like research arts and crafts. We give people different artifacts and design elements and actually ask them to a deign what an experience that would be ideal for them might look like.”

Product Research – “Seeing how people interact with a specific product, the things they’re like or don’t like, the things they might want to change” lets Facebook figure out how to tweak features it’s built so they’re ready to launch.

Last year Facebook went on a foundational research expedition to India. Devanshi Bhandari who works on the globalization. She discovered that even in emerging markets where Snapchat never got popular, people already knew how to use Stories. “We’ve been kind of surprised to learn . . . Ephemeral sharing wasn’t as new to some people as we expected” she tells me. It turns out there are regional Stories copycats around the globe.

As Bhandari dug deeper she found that people wanted more creative tools, but not at the cost of speed. So Facebook began caching the Stories tray from your last visit so it’d still appear when you open Facebook Lite without having to wait for it to load. This week, Facebook will start offering creative tools like filters inside Facebook Lite Stories by enabling them server side so users can do more than just upload unedited videos.

To make Stories global, Facebook adds Archive and audio posts

That trip to India ended up spawning whole new products. Bhandari noticed some users, especially women, weren’t comfortable showing their face in Stories. “People would sometimes put their thumb over the video camera but share the audio content” she tells me. That led Facebook to build Audio Stories. 

But to make Stories truly Facebook-y, it had to build them into all its products. Facebook recently launched Group and Event Stories, where members can collaborate by all contributing clips that show up in the Stories tray atop the News Feed. Now Facebook is going to start building its own version of Snapchat’s Our Stories. Facebook is now testing holiday-based collaborative Stories, starting with the Mid-Autumn Festival in Vietnam. Users can opt to post to this themed Story, and friends (but not the public) will see those clips combined.

This is the final step of Facebook’s three-part plan to get people hooked on Stories, according to Facebook engineering director Rushabh Doshi who leads the product. The idea is that first, Facebook has to get people a taste of Stories by spotlighting them atop the app as well as amidst the feed. Then it makes it easy for people to post their own Stories by offering simple creative tools. And finally, it wants to “Build Stories for what people expect out of Facebook.” That encompasses all the integrations of Stories across the product.

Rushabh Doshi, Facebook’s engineering manager who oversees Stories

Still, the toughest nut to crack won’t be helping users figure out what to share but who to share to. Facebook Stories’ biggest disadvantage is that it’s built around an extremely broad social graph that includes not only friends but family, work colleagues, and distant acquaintances. That can apply a chilling effect to sharing as people don’t feel comfortable posting silly, off-the-cuff, or vulnerable Stories to such a wide audience.

Facebook has struggled with this problem in News Feed for over a decade. It ended up killing off its Friend List Feeds that let people select a subset of their friends and view a feed of just their posts because so few people were using them. Yet the problem remains rampant, and the invasion of parents and bosses has pushed users to Instagram, Snapchat, and other younger apps. Unfortunately for now, Doshi says there’s no plan to build Friend Lists or sharing to subsets of friends for Facebook Stories.

At 300 million daily users, Facebook Stories doesn’t deserve the “ghost town” label any more. People who were already accustomed to Stories elsewhere still see the feature as intrusive, interruptive, and somewhat desperate. But with 2.2 billion total Facebookers, the company can be forced to focus on one-size-fits-all solutions. Yet if Facebook’s Blink testing app can produce must-use filters and effects, and collaborative Stories can unlock new forms of sharing, Facebook Stories could find its purpose.

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Facebook’s plan to let companies it buys live independently is over

Mark Zuckerberg was quick to realize that Facebook, the largest social network in the world, doesn’t have a monopoly on all users nor can it bank on holding its position as top dog forever. Thus he instituted a policy of buying up promising rivals and integrating them into the Facebook ‘group’ in a strategy designed to be a win-win for all.

But by leaving Facebook in abrupt fashion this week, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger — the founders of Instagram — have shown that the social network’s vision of letting acquired businesses operate independently simply isn’t feasible.

Few large-scale acquisitions run smoothly, so it is to Facebook’s credit that Systrom and Krieger remained with the company for six years after Instagram was acquired for $1 billion in 2012.

That’s a long stretch by any tech acquisition standard, but it is still short of Facebook’s vision of entrepreneurs who continue their startup journeys inside its walls.

The Facebook Family

The original idea is a best-of-both-worlds approach: a company’s finances are infinitely secured and it can grow as needed inside the Facebook ‘family,’ with access to resources like engineering, marketing, admin, etc.

That was also the plan for WhatsApp, but founding pair Jan Koum and Brian Acton managed four and three and a half years, respectively, at Facebook following their $19 billion acquisition in 2014. VR firm Oculus, another billion-dollar purchase, lost co-founders Palmer Lucky (political scandal) and Brendan Iribe (reshuffled) three years after its deal. Ex-Xiaomi executive Hugo Barra now runs the unit as “Facebook VP of VR.”

In the normal state of tech acquisitions, getting six years — or even just three — from a founder post-acquisition is impressive. It requires a strong vision and autonomy for the incoming business.

Many founders become serial founders, even after an exit has set them up financially for life. There’s a thrill in building something new, taking sole charge and growing it. But post-acquisition, the basic dynamics change. As a founder, you call the shots — you are the boss — rather than part of the company hierarchy post-deal. Going from employee to founder requires adjustment, but back the other direction is often trickier — particularly when your business is part of a strategy for a larger one that’s rife with politics.

Facebook tried to mitigate that by promising autonomy for its founders.

Instagram’s duo retained a lot of control — Systrom was the face of the company and he reportedly approved all ads personally — while the same was true of WhatsApp, with Koum made a member of the Facebook board. Indeed, the WhatsApp founders dubbed the acquisition a “partnership” such was their insistence that things wouldn’t change under Facebook’s ownership.

Jan Koum, once a member of Facebook’s board, is said to have clashed with the social network’s management over its intentions for his WhatsApp service

Independence Vs Facebook’s Interests

But it didn’t work.

All four founders of WhatsApp and Instagram have left as Facebook inevitably sought further control of their companies in order to advance its wider goals as a business

WhatsApp, for example, has embraced business-consumer communication, is working on payments and has an advertising tie-in with Facebook. These are all features that would have troubled founders Koum and Acton, whose previous public manifesto railed against anything that takes away from a simple user experience, and particularly advertising.

After reported friction with Facebook management, Koum left in April 2018 to “do things I enjoy outside of technology, such as collecting rare air-cooled Porsches, working on my cars and playing ultimate frisbee.” Acton, meanwhile, quietly exited the year before but then tellingly wrote a $50 million check for Signal, an encrypted chat app that rivals WhatsApp, and publicly backed the #deletefacebook campaign over privacy concerns.

Over at Instagram, a similar situation seems to have happened with Systrom and Krieger. As TechCrunch’s Josh Constine reports, sources suggested that the leadership’s “weakening independence” from Facebook was a source of frustration for them that ultimately led to their untimely exit.

Reading the short farewell note from Systrom seems to hammer that home. There’s no thank you for Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg or any other Facebook executive. Systrom instead stated that Krieger and he are keen to explore their “curiosity and creativity again” by building new products.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom continued to be the service’s public face even after its acquisition by Facebook in 2012

Facebook had a good run with its independence policy, but ultimately these four exits illustrate that founders can’t be caged and tamed. While, on the other side, a buyer is always going to want to get their pound of flesh from billion-dollar acquisitions. Facebook can bend the rules and get a lengthier service from founders than most, but you can’t defy gravity forever.

While it has lost the original founders, Facebook has also seen wild success from its purchases. Instagram went from 30 million users pre-acquisition to over one billion today, while WhatsApp has more than 1.5 billion active users up from 450 million at the time of its deal.

The important question now is whether Facebook’s in-house team managing these services can continue to scale them without the inventors in place. Beyond talent, losing that original culture is a blow. These acquired services need to remain differentiated from Facebook from a consumer perspective, otherwise the entire point of owning them — the bet that the future of social networks may not be Facebook — is moot.

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Why Instagram’s founders are resigning: independence from Facebook weakened

Facebook promised Instagram autonomy, but reduced it over time leading to today’s bombshell revelation. Eight years after launching Instagram and six years after selling it to Facebook, Instagram co-founders CEO Kevin Systrom and CTO Mike Krieger are leaving the company, according to The New York Times. The founders apparently did not give a reason for their departure when they informed the company today that they’re resigning and that they’ll depart in the next few weeks.

But according to TechCrunch’s sources, tension had mounted this year between Instagram and Facebook’s leadership regarding Instagram’s autonomy. Facebook had agreed to let it run independently as part of the acquisition deal. But in May, Instagram’s beloved VP of Product Kevin Weil moved to Facebook’s new blockchain team and was replaced by former VP of Facebook News Feed Adam Mosseri — a member of Zuckerberg’s inner circle.

“Adam is a very strong-willed individual” said a source, and “Chris [Cox, Facebook’s Chief Product Officer] and Kevin never really got along.” Between the two, they could pressure Instagram to do more for Facebook — which was important given the impact of scandals and dwindling teen usage on Facebook’s brand. “When Chris started taking initiative and with Adam as more of the old-school in-crowd of Facebook, it was clear that it wasn’t going to be pleasant. I saw that this guy [Systrom] is gonna get squeezed.”

Systrom and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had historically gotten along, but they had diverging opinions at times. A source said that a few times a year they’d clash before resolving things. Those clashes included “Sharing back to Facebook. Kevin wanted to keep the sharing on Instagram but at some point Mark wanted content production on Instagram to flow to Facebook. But things got more heated lately. “Recently Mark decided to pull all of the links to Instagram from Facebook.”

The evidence of that standoff can be seen in Facebook, which last year confirmed it was adding a shortcut to Instagram to its bookmarks menu. That shortcut has since disappeared. And the stress imposed by Facebook also manifested in other departures. Earlier this month, Instagram’s COO Marne Levine who was known as a strong unifying force, went back to lead partnerships at Facebook. Without an immediate replacement named, Instagram started to look more like just a product division within Facebook. And without Levine, it’s unclear who’d be fit to lead Instagram other than Zuckerberg loyalist Mosseri.

After growing the app to 1 billion users, conquering its archrival Snapchat, turning it into a massive advertising business, Instagram’s founders may feel that they’ve done their duty and are ready to tackle different challenges. And rather than fight through Facebook’s impositions, they’d rather go build something new.

In a statement, Systrom wrote that “We’re planning on taking some time off to explore our curiosity and creativity again. Building new things requires that we step back, understand what inspires us and match that with what the world needs; that’s what we plan to do.” Zuckerberg gave his own statement to TechCrunch, stating “Kevin and Mike are extraordinary product leaders and Instagram reflects their combined creative talents. I’ve learned a lot working with them for the past six years and have really enjoyed it. I wish them all the best and I’m looking forward to seeing what they build next.”

The departure follows fellow Facebook acquisition WhatsApp’s founders leaving under much more grim circumstances. Brian Acton cited Facebook privacy concerns amongst reasons for his departure, tweeting “Delete Facebook” amidst one of its recent scandals. Over the coming days, we’ll investigate whether any similar concerns contributed to the exit of the Instagram founders. Instagram spokespeople did not respond to several requests for comment.

CEO Kevin Systrom still gives final approval of all ads on Instagram

The pair, former Stanford classmates, originally built a social location app Burbn but discovered its photo filters were by far the most popular part of the app. By combining tools to make grainy photos from early smartphone look good with a social feed for sharing them, Instagram became perhaps the world’s most succesful mobile app. Deemed such a threat, Facebook spent $715 million to acquire the startup and its less-than 50 million monthly users.

Supercharged by Facebook’s engineering team, Krieger could finally rest a little after spending years fighting server fires in attempts to manage Instagram’s meteoric growth. Sales, internationalization, anti-spam, and other resources from Facebook let Instagram fuel its growth and sprout an advertising business.

The moment of truth for Instagram came in late 2016 with the launch of Stories, a clone of Snapchat’s trendy ephemeral sharing feature. At the time, Systrom admitted “they deserve all the credit”. But by jamming Stories atop the already-thriving Instagram feed, sorting them to show your best friends first unlike Snapchat, and focusing on performance in developing countries Snap neglected, the copycat soon surpassed the original. Instagram Stories now has 400 million daily users compared to 188 million on Snapchat’s whole app.

During those six years, Instagram also had its share of troubles. Cyberbully became rampant, leading the company to eventually invest heavily in artificial intelligence and human moderators to keep the app clean. Russian military operatives spread misinformation and propaganda on Instagram that reached 20 million Americans, implicating the company in an election interference scandal that will continue through the upcoming mid-term elections.

Facebook had largely allowed Instagram to run independently. Systrom and Zuckerberg worked closely, yet Instagram wasn’t forced to drown its users in cross-promotion for other Facebook products or make worrying privacy decisions. As Mosseri moved in and Facebook wanted Instagram to pull its weight, its autonomy was endangered, leading to disagreements between the two factions’ leaders.

Facebook has moved to exert more control over all of its acquistions. Chris Daniels, head of Internet.org, was moved to oversee WhatsApp. And Oculus was moved under the purview of Facebook’s head of hardware Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, another long-time confidant and Harvard classmate of Zuckerberg. Together, the moves seemed to endanger the independence of the conglomerate’s biggest acquisitions by appointing Facebook loyalists at the top. Without Systrom and Krieger, Instagram could see its autonomy dwindle. That might in turn endanger its ability to recruity retain talent.

Facebook united

Perhaps the strongest legacy of Systrom and Krieger will be how Instagram changed global culture. It made non-artists feel creative, and let people give friends a window into their world, engendering empathy and friendship.

At the same time, a desperate lust for Likes led many people to manicure their online image while hiding their sorrows and vulnerabilities. Instagram became the premier venue for success theater, where people engender health-harming envy in others by showing off just their most glamorous moments. And when Instagram launched Stories to try to get users to share more than just their life highlights, it ended up normalizing the behavior of interrupting every special moment with their smartphone camera.

Systrom took a stand on the digital well-being issue, saying “We’re building tools that will help the IG community know more about the time they spend on Instagram – any time should be positive and intentional . . . Understanding how time online impacts people is important, and it’s the responsibility of all companies to be honest about this. We want to be part of the solution. I take that responsibility seriously.”

Perhaps Systrom and Krieger’s next project will seek to offset some of the distortions to society caused by their creation.

This article has been updated with context from sources regarding why the founders are leaving, and with their official statement.

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Amazon introduces APL, a new design language for building Alexa skills for devices with screens

Along with the launch of the all-new Echo Show, the Alexa-powered device with a screen, Amazon also introduced a new design language for developers who want to build voice skills that include multimedia experiences. Called Alexa Presentation Language, or APL, developers will be able to build voice-based apps that also include things like images, graphics, slideshows, and video, and easily customize them for different device types – including not only the Echo Show, but other Alexa-enabled devices like Fire TV, Fire Tablet, and the small screen of the Alexa alarm clock, the Echo Spot.

In addition, third-party devices with screens will be able to take advantage of APL through the Alexa Smart Screen and TV Device SDK, arriving in the months ahead.

Voice-based skill experiences can sometimes feel limited because of their lack of a visual component. For example, a cooking skill would work better if it just showed the steps as Alexa guided users through them. Other skills could simply benefit from visual cues or other complementary information, like lists of items.

The new language was built from the ground-up specifically for adapting Alexa skills for different screen-based, voice-first experiences.

At launch, APL supports experiences that include text, graphics, and slideshows, with video support coming soon. Developers could do things like sync the on-screen text and images with Alexa’s spoken voice. Plus, the new skills built with this language could allow for both voice commands as well as input through touch or remote controls, if available.

The language is also designed to be flexible in terms of the placement of the graphics or other visual elements, so companies can adhere to their brand guidelines, Amazon says. And it’s adaptable to many different types of screen-based devices, including those with different sized screens or varying memory or processing capabilities.

When introducing the new language at an event in Seattle this morning, Amazon said that APL will feel familiar to anyone who’s used to working with front-end development, as it adheres to universally understood styling practices and using similar syntax.

Amazon is also providing sample APL documents to help developers get started, which can be used as-is or can be modified. Developers can choose to build their own from scratch, as well.

These APL documents are JSON files sent from a skill to a device. The device will then evaluate the document, import the images and other data, then render the experience. Developers can use elements like images, text, and scrollviews, pages, sequences, layouts, conditional expressions, speech synchronization, and other commands. Support for video, audio and HTML5 are coming soon.

“This year alone, customers have interacted with visual skills hundreds of millions of times. You told us you want more design flexibility -in both content and layout – and the ability to optimize experiences for th growing family of Alexa devices with screens,” said Nedium Fresko, VP of Alexa Devices and Developer Technologies, in a statement. “With the Alexa Presentation Language, you can unleash your creativity and build interactive skills that adapt to the unique characteristics of Alexa Smart Screen devices,” he said.

A handful of skills have already put APL to use, including a CNBC skill that show a graph of stock performance; Big Sky that shows images to accompany its weather forecasts; NextThere, which lets you view public transit schedules; Kayak, which shows slideshows of travel destinations, Food Network, which shows recipes, and several others.

Alexa device owners will be able to use these APL-powered skills staring next month.

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European parliament gives thumbs up to controversial copyright reforms

The European Parliament has just voted to back controversial proposals to reform online copyright — including supporting an extension to cover snippets of publishers content (Article 11), and to make platforms that hold significant amounts of content liable for copyright violations by their users (Article 13).

Plenary adopts it’s negotiating position on copyright rules for the digital single market. Negotiations with Council will begin soon. pic.twitter.com/hJOhClrZyf

— JURI Committee Press (@EP_Legal) September 12, 2018

Today’s plenary vote in the European parliament was on amended proposals that had been rejected by MEPs in a vote in July with parliamentarians arguing for a fuller debate and more balanced measures.

The vote is a major victory for MEP Axel Voss who has been driving the copyright reform.

MEPs largely backed Voss’ amended proposals today which had narrowed the scope of the rejected text, such as, in the case of Article 11, by allowing for links to contain individual words from the linked to publishers’ content — an attempt to respond to critics’ contention that the measure would outlaw hyperlinks (which can often contain the headline of an article).

On Article 13 Voss’ amended proposal had reduced the scope to platforms that both host “significant” amounts of content and also “promote” them. It also includes an exception for small businesses.

As the votes were announced a visibly delighted Voss beamed, clapped and hugged his seat neighbours, as well as giving a broad thumbs up to all those watching.

But critics and free speech advocates described it as a catastrophe.

Final vote for Parliament position on the copyright directive with #UploadFilters and #LinkTax: adopted. Parliament has failed to listen to citizens’ and experts’ concerns. #SaveYourInternet pic.twitter.com/gtGi6rg5kL

— Julia Reda (@Senficon) September 12, 2018

MEP Marietje Schaake expressed disappointment with the result, telling us: “The Parliament squandered the opportunity to get the copyright reform on the right track. This is a disastrous result for the protection of our fundamental rights, ordinary internet users and Europe´s future in the field of artificial intelligence. We have set a step backwards instead of creating a true copyright reform that is fit for the 21st century.”

“Members of the house, a heartfelt thanks for the job that we have done together. This is a good sign for the creative industries in Europe,” said Voss after the vote, as he asked for the report to be sent back to committee to begin institutional negotiations with Member States, via the European Council.

MEPs duly obliged.

There was just one interruption prior to that last vote, with a single MEP standing up to denounce the result as “an enormous strike against freedom of speech on the Internet”. Proceedings continued.

Other amendments that had been tabled by MEPs but were rejected by the parliament as a whole included ditching the reforms entirely and leaving the current law as is.

Welcoming the parliament’s vote in a statement, the European Commission’s VP for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip and commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, Mariya Gabriel, put out this joint statement:

We welcome today’s vote at the European Parliament. It is a strong and positive signal and an essential step to achieving our common objective of modernising the copyright rules in the European Union.

Discussions between the co-legislators can now start on a legislative proposal which is a key element of the Digital Single Market strategy and one of the priorities for the European Commission.

Our aim for this reform is to bring tangible benefits for EU citizens, researchers, educators, writers, artists, press and cultural heritage institutions and to open up the potential for more creativity and content by clarifying the rules and making them fit for the digital world. At the same time, we aim to safeguard free speech and ensure that online platforms – including 7,000 European online platforms – can develop new and innovative offers and business models.

The Commission stands ready to start working with the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, so that the directive can be approved as soon as possible, ideally by the end of 2018. We are fully committed to working with the co-legislators in order to achieve a balanced and positive outcome enabling a true modernisation of the copyright legislation that Europe needs.

Also very happy with the result a swathe of creative industries. The European Publishers Council welcome the adoption of the Publisher’s neighbouring right. In a statement its exec director, Angela Mills Wade, said: “Today, we give credit to MEPs who voted for press freedom, democracy, professional journalism and European values.  We thank the Rapporteur, Axel Voss, MEP, for working tirelessly to achieve a balanced outcome.”

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Meet SelfieCircus and 8 more in Snapchat’s new startup accelerator

Snapchat is hedging its bets as its social network shrinks. Today Snap Inc revealed the first class of its startup accelerator called Yellow that offers $150,000 in funding and creativity-centric business education in exchange for what a source says is a seven to ten percent equity stake — in line with other accelerators like Y Combinator. The nine companies will take up a three-month residency in one of Snap’s buildings in Venice, Los Angeles.

The accelerator class ranges from augmented reality and journalism studios to lifystyle brands around weddings and fashion to aesthetic-focused marketplaces like ConBody that pairs you with a muscular ex-convict for workouts.

Yellow calls itself “A launchpad for creative minds and entrepreneurs who are looking to build the next generation of great media companies.” Yellow could become a content provider and potential acquisition feeder for the company. ANRK and Space Oddity Films could boost Snapchat’s AR gaming effort, Hashtag Our Stories could fill Snap Map with citizen news broadcasts, Toonstar could bring animation to Discover, and SelfieCircus could power marketing pop-ups like the Snapbots that sold the company’s Spectacles.

But at the same time, it’s hard not to see Yellow as a potential escape route for Snap’s business if Instagram’s competition does end up stealing all its users. Snapchat lost three million last quarter, contributed to a massive share price downslide. Following today’s departure of COO Imran Khan, it’s trading at $9.66, just a few cents above its all-time low.

If a few of Yellow’s investments blow up and Snap makes capital available for follow-on rounds, the returns could supplement its ad revenue. But none of this first batch of startups looks poised to be gamechangers the way Snap’s acquisitions of Bitmoji and Looksery’s early AR filters were.

Yellow’s Inaugural Class

Here’s a look at the first nine companies in Snapchat Yellow, courtesy of write-ups provided by Snap.

ANRK (London, UK) – a new realities studio, exploring immersive storytelling through AR, VR, games and beyond.

• We are passionate about human-centered narratives, and use playful interaction and new technologies to create powerful experiences that connect the digital and physical.

ConBody (New York, NY) – a prison-style fitness bootcamp that hires formerly incarcerated individuals to teach fitness classes.

• ConBody is facilitating an opportunity-filled lifestyle by empowering our community to realize success lies within. We hire formerly incarcerated individuals to build personal discipline through a unique blend of cardiovascular training and bodyweight exercises that take advantage of the resistance properties of everyday objects. We apply military techniques to space constraints intimately familiar to city-dwellers and individuals who reside in small, constrained spaces. In addition, we’re changing the views of formerly incarcerated individuals to be changed by allowing professionals to interact with formerly incarcerated individuals, which allows to give professionals a different perspective on them.

Hashtag Our Stories (Durban, South Africa) – an international mobile journalism (MOJO) network, publishing vertical video stories on social media. Created by citizens, curated by journalists.

• Since September 2017, we’ve empowered 200 citizen storytellers in over 40 countries to produce videos with their phones. We focus on constructive, solutions-based stories and provide more diverse news coverage. Because more cameras and more perspectives means more truth.

IDK (Los Angeles, CA) – the ID for Korean music. We are a digital media company expanding in-depth on the music of Korea and K-Pop as a globally recognized genre; showcasing the Identity of the artists that shape the culture. We provide insightful and rich coverage and content for the global Korean Pop audience.

• We are creating a Global Brand and Destination for an English-Speaking Korean Pop Audience. Our mission is to create rich and stylized content about the Korean Music Genre; less gossip, more news & features. We want to provide a legitimate outlet for Korean Pop Culture; to create emotive, aspirational stories that are visually chic to a young, hyper-aware, and digitally engaged audience.

• As the company begins we will focus on publishing the best in engaging social video content. We will translate this content across platforms, ultimately building brands, shows, and stories that feed the insatiable audience appetite for Korean Pop. From there we will build towards live events, merchandise, and much more.

Love Stories TV (New York, NY) – a video platform for wedding planning and inspiration, bringing engaged couples and event professionals together in a uniquely visual community. Think of us like ‘Houzz’ for weddings: We connect brides and grooms with the ideas, inspiration, products, and services they need for their weddings in a uniquely visual community.

• On lovestoriestv.com filmmakers and newlyweds from all over the world share their professionally produced videos along with the data and details about the wedding. Brides and grooms watch the videos to find ideas, inspiration, products, and services for their wedding. We also have an active community of pre-engaged-brides under the age of 24 who watch the videos on our site, social, and Amazon Prime channel for entertainment. We partner with brands and wedding pros to help them reach brides and grooms on our site and channels via the real wedding films that feature them and original content.

Premme (Los Angeles, CA) – a fashion-first, body-positive lifestyle brand for the plus-size It-Girl.

• Today, 67% of women in America wear plus-sizes – yet plus-size fashion only accounts for 17% of the women’s apparel market. When it comes to media representation, plus-sizes are similarly lacking in positive, aspirational visibility. Premme empowers women who have been historically marginalized through fashion-forward, statement making clothing and visionary, contemporary editorial content and imagery. By creating a relatable, yet aspirational, brand that centers plus-size women, we aim to flip the script on what it means to look and be stylish, while leading the conversation and movement towards truly diverse and inclusive fashion.

SelfieCircus (Los Angeles, CA) – a new kind of circus.

• SelfieCircus creates popup experiences designed to be documented and shared on social media. The company is building a platform to connect artists, brands, and consumers. The first SelfieCircus will open in Los Angeles in late 2018.

Space Oddity Films (Los Angeles, CA) – a content studio exploring tech and culture that creates innovative content for every platform – mobile, digital, AR/VR, video games, feature film and television.

• We tell stories about the convergence of humanity and technology. Our original viral tech horror thriller shorts are the foundation of our brand. Our goal is to make the future now.

Toonstar (Los Angeles, CA) – a digital animation network that creates and distributes daily pop culture cartoons for an “always on” world. Powered by proprietary animation tech, we produce daily, snackable, interactive animated content at unprecedented speed and cost.

• We have a large and highly engaged audience of teens and young adults generating millions of views per week because our content is sticky, shareable, relatable and engineered specifically for social.  We’re a team of studio alumni and media tech innovators who have produced hit digital animated series, built groundbreaking interactive media technologies and launched mega entertainment franchises. Now we’re on a mission to build a nextgen animation network that delivers greater reach + engagement at a fraction of the operating cost.

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