Retro App Revolutionizes Photo-Sharing with Time-Travel Feature
Retro, a friend-focused photo-sharing app with roughly a million users, has added a new feature that lets you “time-travel” through your old photo memories from your phone’s camera roll. This feature, dubbed “Rewind,” is private to you unless you choose to share the photos with others. Meanwhile, the app’s co-founder, Nathan Sharp, explains that the idea for Rewind was inspired by a feature the app already offered and was proving popular.
How Rewind Works
Today, at the end of the row showcasing the photos your friends shared during the week, there’s a card you can tap that will let you view your own photos from that same week a year ago. However, that option wasn’t accessible to newer Retro users, since they hadn’t yet uploaded enough photos to the app to take advantage of the photo memories feature. In addition, the feature is designed to help users engage more with their old photos.
Pushback Against AI-Generated Content
The addition is, to some extent, a pushback against the growing trend of AI-generated content and “for you” feed-style algorithms. As people engage with those platforms more and more, something that has to be true and will be true is that people will still want to see more of their friends. Consequently, the photos and videos you take will need to find a place where they can reach the intended audience.
Engagement and Features
Although nearly half (45.7%) of Retro’s users participate in the app on a daily basis, the Rewind feature could boost that engagement even higher. To try Rewind, you can either launch it from the end of the row of shared photos, just past the “this week in” card, or from its more prominent position as the middle tab in the bottom navigation bar. Meanwhile, the feature allows users to view their old photos, share them, or hide them if they’re no longer relevant.
Competing with Other Apps
The idea to look back at older photo memories is hardly new, of course. In the past, a startup called Timehop popularized the idea of doing something more with our growing digital photo archives by allowing users to revisit old photos through its simple mobile app. However, Sharp doesn’t believe these will be direct competitors for Retro, as they’re designed differently and serve different purposes.
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