Snap. Turnaround.

With relentless competition from TikTok and the Facebook / Instagram / WhatsApp empire, Snap has done remarkable well – it is growing at its fastest rate since 2017, the year it went public. It added 13M daily users during Q2, a 23% increase YoY. 293M people use Snapchat now every day around the world, up from 173M this time 4 years ago. Snap’s revenue soared 116% to $982M (with advertisers returning to their platform after they’d scaled their spending during the height of the pandemic), making it a faster growing business than Twitter or Facebook. The big – and certainly not only driver – is its relentless pace of innovation in AR, including features to experience products before buying.

VOCHI. Raises $.

Computer vision-powered video editing app VOCHI, covered in our DIY Video Creation Apps report, raises $2.4M in a second/late-seed round. VOCHI is a former App Store App of the Day video app that applies a particular aesthetic to your video (such as a dreamy vibe, artistic feel, or 8-bit look). Leveraging AI-based segmentation, it also can highlight the moving content with glowing lines, add blurs or motion, apply different filters, insert 3D objects into the video, add glitter or sparkles, and a bunch of other effects.

Dropbox. Back to consumers with photo needs.

Dropbox announces multiple interface and performance upgrades to its platform that are aimed to make it easier for consumers to organize and upload their photos, give them faster access to content, and allow them to do more in the cloud storage platform through new file conversion tools. Most interestingly, 6.5 years after it killed Carousel as part of its “let’s go after businesses instead of consumers” shift in strategy, its free service lets users now automatically back up photos and videos from mobile devices. The company is also rolling out file conversion features that will allow users to convert different file formats without leaving Dropbox. At launch, the feature allows JPEGs to be converted to PNGs or PDFs, for example.

Printbox. Responsive Editor for photobooks.

B2B photo print product enabler, Printbox, Gold sponsor of our upcoming Visual 1st conference, releases an upgrade to its Responsive Advanced Editor, which includes new functionality for more conveniently designing photobooks on mobile devices. Features include the Smart Creation and Smart Ideas functions – intelligent technologies for dynamically proposing spreads and automatically creating ready-made photobooks from the user's photos.

Triller & Instagram Reels. Going long.

In the wake of TikTok expanding its videos to up to 3 minutes,Triller now allows the creation of videos longer than its 16-second default length. Also announced: Instagram Reels now supports videos up to 60 seconds (previously 30 seconds). This is all in the wake of YouTube going in the other direction with YouTube Shorts. Nobody wants to miss out on long tail use cases – or advertising opportunities – in either (long or short) direction.

Spotify & GIPHY. From visuals to music.

It’s not only that music spurred consumers to create and share videos (short-form music videos by TikTok and a range of competitors, videos – or hybrid photo/videos we referred to as phodeos – can also trigger the consumption of music. Case in point: Spotify and online GIF database GIPHY partner to enable discovery of new music through Spotify-linked GIFs. Click on such a GIF and you’ll be taken to Spotify directly to hear the artist’s music. Note that GIPHY was acquired by Facebook last year for $400M and Facebook and Spotify also partner by enabling Facebook users to listen to Spotify music from inside the Facebook app.