Lapse: a cautionary tale for social products that prioritize disposable sharing?
Official Announcement - November 3rd 2025
Hey all,
It’s with a heavy heart i’m writing to tell you that we have to make some changes to Lapse.
Over the past three years, millions of you have captured billions of memories that made Lapse what it is today. The team and I are endlessly grateful, and constantly in awe of the love you’ve shown our little camera.
But as the community has grown, so too have the costs of running the platform. And while Lapse remains full of heart, creativity, and honesty - we can no longer sustain the scale we’ve reached.
Faced with that, we had two options:
close down completely or simplify the app.
We chose to save it because we still believe in what Lapse stands for; an alternative way to capture life, free from the pressure of over-curation.
So, from early December, Lapse will return to its roots: a disposable camera app to capture and keep your treasured moments.
Sadly this means we will lose our social features, like Feed, Profile, and Chat - but your Memories are safe, and will now sync with iOS Photos.
We understand that for many, Lapse became more than a camera, it became a special place to share between friends (not followers).
So this decision has been the toughest we’ve ever made. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for choosing to capture and share your lives through Lapse.
It’s a deep privilege that means the world to us, and we hope you’ll keep creating with us on the new Lapse.
Love Ben & the whole Lapse team
Replies
Visla
Building anything for social media/community is difficult, especially when the whole pitch is “friends not followers.” I get the idea, but my friends and I already talk in group chats. If we want to share photos, we know how to do so. We don’t need an app to force a vibe or moment. This is exactly why I don’t jump all-in on new social platforms, most of the time I’m not joining for some deep friendship circle. I’m there for info, news, updates, product announcements, stuff you can’t really get anywhere else. Same with pretty much most people I know. There is so much pressure to build “community” around things people don’t actually use for community.
Raycast
@mogabr right, social is super hard, especially if you don't have a sustainable business model. 🤓
Someone's gotta pay for all that storage and compute!
minimalist phone: creating folders
I'm not surprised. The last major social media platform that was created or achieved worldwide success is TikTok in 2018, when they managed to transform Douyin into a "Western" version. The concept of social networks is 20 years old, and succeeding in this market in 2025 means the chances are already slim. Still, 10M+ downloads in the Play Store is an outstanding achievement.
BTW, interesting comment under one of their IG posts:
Visla
@busmark_w_nika
I get where that user is coming from, but this part is where it loses me. Paying a yearly fee for something built around “friends” doesn’t make sense to me. I’m not asking my friends to download another app, create another account, and then pay for it just so we can share photos. We already talk in group chats. We already know how to reach each other, WhatsApp group chats, or Telegram Group Chats, or any other type of group chats is better than this.
If I’m paying for a tool, it’s because it gives me something I can’t get anywhere else, not friendship, 99% of the people I'm connected to via social media I do not know, and will probably never meet, and that's ok with me. But that’s the mismatch for me. Social media isn’t where my close circle lives. It’s where information lives.
So I get the nostalgia, but expecting people to pay for a friends-only camera feels backwards. If Lapse stays as a simple disposable camera app, cool. But the “friends not followers” angle never aligned with how most people actually use these platforms, it's about followers, impressions, influence, not friendship.
Korgi
@busmark_w_nika this was my initial thought, as well - with that level of scale, what is the possibility of charging for those who want to stick with it? It's possible that they did they research and didn't have the number of potential users needed to sustain this version of the service or that the subscription at this scale would be prohibitive.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@dmitcha To be honest, I didn't use that because if I incorporated one more social media platform in my portfolio, I would go crazy. But maybe it is better to shut the platform down rather than burn out the complete success and create a big faux pas.
Korgi
@busmark_w_nika Yep, that was my thought - they surely talked to customers and did research before deciding to end that portion of the offering.