By now this is no longer news so I am simply eulogizing and joining the millions of mourners still coming to terms with the demise of an application that used to be many people’s favourite until Instagram landed on Android.
PicPlz though still available on iOS through the Apple App Store, was mainly a darling of the Droid-trotting community and had established a good following. I, for instance, used it a lot and had over 16 of my native phone contacts actively using the app and over 89 others in my network as of March 2012, the last time I was ever active on PicPlz. What happened after March? Well, everyone knows that Instagram became available on Android and those of us actively using other photo-sharing applications shifted attention and spent less and less time on them. I still use Pixlr-o-matic, Retro and Vignette camera apps though I no longer find it necessary to keep posting on PicPlz. Reason? The tide! The tide of time comes and its waves just carry everyone aboard. For example, do you still fancy using Netscape Navigator? That’s my point.
I was not entirely shocked by the announcement on the PicPlz website that I saw yesterday stating that the app will be closing shop. The writing was on the wall. Tech pundits and fellow bloggers have been hard at work contemplating on what might have necessitated the move by Mixed Media Labs to shut down the erstwhile popular photo-sharing app. Though competition from the 50 million user strong Instragram may not be necessarily the reason why they are closing shop, its far reaching impact cannot be understated in any way.
Dalton Caldwell, the PicPlz founder may be having something new under his sleeve (he is quoted by several media outlets saying that they are concentrating on other long term projects). I understand that they already have Pinflip for Pinterest which is already doing well in the US market and slowly being received warmly by the rest of the world.
Before they close shop, users have been given an option to download their cherished moments in the form of photos through a download button next to their photos from the photo feed.
The service will close on 3rd of July, a day before the famous July 4th for Americans when they would’ve loved to share fond memories on that network. Sadly that won’t happen. Luckily for those of us in Kenya we had a chance to share our 1st of June Independence Day (Madaraka Day) photos but we chose to ignore. Go ahead and download your cherished memories for safekeeping elsewhere, not MegaUploads, which went away too. I got the service discontinuation email from PicPlz this morning so this is serious. Also the application is no longer available on the Google Play Store and other major third party Android application stores. I have also been informed that the app has already been pulled down from the App Store.
RIP PicPlz. You were good while you lasted.
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