Poparazzi is a unique photo sharing app that bans selfies

Why it matters: A new photo sharing app is taking the US App Store by storm and it could give rivals like Instagram reason for concern. Poparazzi’s fresh take on social media seems to be resonating with users as well. In its beta, the app quickly attracted 10,000 testers and went on to receive more than 500,000 pre-installs on the App Store.

Poparazzi, which launched earlier this week from developer TTYL Inc., has a simple mission: to take away the pressure to be perfect on social media by preventing users from posting photos of themselves. This, the team said, puts the emphasis where it should’ve been all along: on the people you are with.

Here’s how Poparazzi devs explained the situation in a recent Medium post.

Over the last decade our feeds have become increasingly filled with edited, seemingly effortless perfection. When we post about ourselves, we naturally gravitate towards sharing only the most exciting moments in our life. We over-edit photos and write witty captions in an attempt to portray our best selves. The result: a competition for attention where nobody wins. The more we scroll, the more we feel like we don’t stack up. And so the cycle continues…

That’s a spot-on analysis of the current social media landscape, and for some, especially children, it can be quite dangerous.

With Poparazzi, your profile is created by the photos that your friends post of you, and vice-versa. The company notes that the person in the photo is always in control, meaning you can delete a photo of yourself if you don’t like it or set your profile to private so only approved people can share photos of you.

According to App Annie, Poparazzi is the top free app in the App Store for the week of May 24.