A-List Investors, 1 Million Downloads: Is Selfie App 'Shots' For Real?

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Justin Bieber, an investor and active Shots user, takes a selfie with a fan in Los Angeles last December.

Image: Dan Steinberg/Associated Press

By Kurt Wagner2014-04-13 00:00:07 UTC

There are two days that Shots CEO John Shahidi says he will never forget.

The first happened in December of 2011, when Shahidi was still running the mobile gaming company RockLive. He woke up to find one of his company's top mobile games, Heads Up, had crashed inexplicably. After quickly scanning Twitter to see what the game's users were saying, he found the problem.

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Justin Bieber had played the game and posted his top score on Twitter. The publicity had caused thousands of people to download and play the game. "It just crashed our servers," Shahidi told Mashable.

It was the first time Shahidi witnessed the power of Bieber's social media influence first-hand.

The second day he'll never forget took place in March 2012. It was the day Bieber called Shahidi in hopes of becoming a RockLive investor. The only problem: Shahidi and his RockLive co-founder, his brother Sammy, didn't want to make games anymore. They were exhausted. “They’d blow up, then they’d fall off the face of the earth,” he explains. Bieber was such a fan of RockLive that he was interested in whatever company the duo wanted to build.

They wanted to make something that would last and, ultimately, make a difference. They had the power of Bieber's social media reach, and they wanted to put it to good use. So with Bieber as an investor, they left RockLive behind and created Shots Mobile and its first app Shots, a social network that specializes in one kind of photo sharing experience: the selfie.

Shots, which launched in November, is an app that allows users to post a selfie to their followers, much like other social media apps like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or Instagram. The major difference is that Shahidi wanted to build something safe for teenagers — a social site where bullies don't exist and posting a selfie doesn't prompt criticism from friends or strangers.

The app only allows a user's friends to comment, and only if they share a selfie of their own along with it. (People can't hide behind the keyboard, he explains.) Only the front-facing camera works within the app, and you can't upload from the camera roll. That ensures people are taking photos in real-time, capturing their true identities, says Shahidi. Anyone reported for bullying is instantly kicked off the app.

The Shots iOS app launched in November, and announced one million downloads last week.

This anti-bullying approach is personal for Shahidi, who says that even at the age of 34 he is still bullied online. After being bullied as a child, the social media abuse as an adult was a reminder of how that felt growing up. He is still teased about his weight, and for being a momma's boy of sorts. Before moving to the Bay Area last August, Shahidi had never lived more than two miles from his mother, who raised him and his brother by herself.

“[Online bullying is] nothing that’s going to make me want to hurt myself, but going back to someone who’s 20 years younger than me — 14 or 15 years old — they are hurting themselves," says Shahidi.

The challenge behind marketing a "bully free" app is to make it cool, says Shahidi. Luckily, Shots has an investor who can make anything cool for teenagers. When Shots first launched, 90% of its user base also followed Bieber on Twitter. That number is now down to 20%, which Shahidi believes is a testament to the app's functionality.

How far, though, can an app solely focused on selfies really go? Pretty far, if you ask Shahidi.

The company announced 1 million downloads on Thursday, and gets 750,000 active users per month. Bieber and fellow investor Floyd Mayweather, the boxer, help market the app regularly by sharing selfies to their millions of Twitter followers. Shots also has the audience coveted by social networks everywhere: teenagers.

Three quarters of Shots users are females under the age of 24.

Shots is not the only selfie style app making headlines. Frontback is also making a name for itself, with high profile celeb users like Ashton Kutcher, Snoop Lion (formerly Snoop Dogg) and Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey.

Although Shots is nowhere near the top photo and video iOS apps in the U.S., Shahidi points to other countries like Brazil and Mexico where the app is routinely in the top 50 in the same category, according to App Annie. Currently, the app is also only available on iOS, but an Android version is in the works, says Shahidi.

With stalwarts like Facebook and Twitter rolling out new features on a near-weekly basis, making it in the social network industry is no small challenge. But Shahidi is up for the challenge, and believes users will see the difference in a network like Shots if they give it a chance.

"We're bigger than just building something with Justin," says Shahidi. "This is something humanity really needs. We want to build something positive for teenagers."

It's a lofty goal, but the selfie has surprised us before. Perhaps it can do so again.

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Topics: apps, Apps and Software, iOS apps, justin bieber, Mobile, Selfie, shots, Social Media