{"id":14515,"date":"2019-03-21T19:46:16","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T19:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/picsart-hits-130-million-maus-as-chinese-flock-to-its-photo-editing-app-2.html"},"modified":"2019-03-21T19:46:16","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T19:46:16","slug":"picsart-hits-130-million-maus-as-chinese-flock-to-its-photo-editing-app-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/picsart-hits-130-million-maus-as-chinese-flock-to-its-photo-editing-app-2.html","title":{"rendered":"PicsArt hits 130 million MAUs as Chinese flock to its photo-editing app"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re like me, who isn\u2019t big on social media, you\u2019d think that the image filters that come inside most apps will do the job. But for many others, especially the younger crowd, making their photos stand out is a huge deal.<\/p>\n

The demand is big enough that PicsArt, <\/a> a rival to filtering companies VSCO and Snapseed, recently hit 130 million monthly active users worldwide, roughly a year after it amassed 100 million MAUs<\/a>. Like VSCO, PicsArt now offers video overlays, though images are still its focus.<\/p>\n

Nearly 80 percent of PicsArt\u2019s users are under the age of 35, and those younger than 18 are driving most of its growth. The \u201cGen Z\u201d (the generation after millennials) users aren\u2019t obsessed with the next big, big thing. Rather, they pride themselves on having niche interests, be it K-pop, celebrities, anime, sci-fi or space science, topics that come in the form of filters, effects, stickers and GIFs in PicsArt\u2019s content library.<\/p>\n

\u201cPicsArt is helping to drive a trend I call visual storytelling. There\u2019s a generation of young people who communicate through memes, short-form videos, images and stickers, and they rarely use words,\u201d Tammy Nam, who joined PicsArt as its chief operating officer in July<\/a>, told TechCrunch in an interview.<\/p>\n

PicsArt has so far raised $45 million<\/a>, according to data collected by Crunchbase. It picked up $20 million<\/a> from a Series B round in 2016 to grow its Asia focus and told TechCrunch that it\u2019s \u201cactively considering fundraising to fuel [its] rapid growth even more.\u201d\"picsart\"<\/p>\n

PicsArt wants to help users stand out on social media, for instance, by virtually applying this rainbow makeup look on them. Image: PicsArt via Weibo<\/a>The app doubles as a social platform, although the use case is much smaller compared to the size of Instagram, Facebook and other mainstream social media products. About 40 percent of PicsArt\u2019s users post on the app, putting it in a unique position where it competes with the social media juggernauts on one hand, and serves as a platform-agnostic app to facilitate content creation for its rivals on the other.<\/p>\n

What separates PicsArt from the giants, according to Nam, is that people who do share there tend to be content creators rather than passive consumers.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn TikTok <\/a> and Instagram, the majority of the people there are consumers. Almost 100 percent of the people on PicsArt are creating or editing something. For many users, coming on PicsArt is a built-in habit. They come in every week, and find the editing process Zen-like and peaceful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trending in China<\/h2>\n

Most of PicsArt\u2019s users live in the United States, but the app owes much of its recent success to China, its fastest growing market with more than 15 million MAUs. The regional growth, which has been 10-30 percent month-over-month recently, appears more remarkable when factoring in PicsArt\u2019s zero user acquisition expense in a crowded market where pay-to-play is a norm for emerging startups.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany larger companies [in China] are spending a lot of money on advertising to gain market share. PicsArt has done zero paid marketing in China,\u201d noted Nam.\"\"<\/p>\n

Screenshot: TikTok-related stickers from PicsArt\u2019s libraryWhen people catch sight of an impressive image filtering effect online, many will inquire about the toolset behind it. Chinese users find out about the Armenian startup from photos and videos hashtagged #PicsArt, not different from how VSCO <\/a> gets discovered from #vscocam on Instagram <\/a>. It\u2019s through such word of mouth that PicsArt broke into China, where users flocked to its Avengers-inspired disappearing superhero effect last May when the film was screening. China is now the company\u2019s second largest market by revenue after the U.S.\"\"<\/p>\n

Screenshot: PicsArt\u00a0lets users easily apply the Avengers dispersion effect to their own photosA hurdle that all media apps see in China is the country\u2019s opaque guidelines on digital content. Companies in the business of disseminating information, from WeChat to TikTok, hire armies of content moderators to root out what the government deems inappropriate or illegal. PicsArt says it uses artificial intelligence to sterilize content and keeps a global moderator team that also keeps an eye on its China content.<\/p>\n

Despite being headquartered in Silicon Valley, PicsArt has placed its research and development center in Armenia, home to founder Hovhannes Avoyan.<\/a> This gives the startup access to much cheaper engineering talents in the country and neighboring Russia compared to what it can hire in the U.S. To date, 70 percent of the company\u2019s 360 employees are working in engineering and product development (50 percent of whom are female), an investment it believes helps keep its creative tools up to date.<\/p>\n

Most of PicsArt\u2019s features are free to use, but the firm has also looked into getting paid. It rolled out a premium program last March that gives users more sophisticated functions and exclusive content. This segment has already leapfrogged advertising to be PicsArt\u2019s largest revenue source, although in China, its budding market, paid subscriptions have been slow to come.\"picsart<\/p>\n

PicsArt lets users do all sorts of creative work, including virtually posing with their idol. Image: PicsArt via Weibo\u201dIn China, people don\u2019t want to pay because they don\u2019t believe in the products. But if they understand your value, they are willing to pay, for example, they pay a lot for mobile games,\u201d said Jennifer Liu, PicsArt China\u2019s country manager.<\/p>\n

And Nam is positive that Chinese users will come to appreciate the app\u2019s value. \u201cIn order for this new generation to create really differentiated content, become influencers, or be more relevant on social media, they have to do edit their content. It\u2019s just a natural way for them to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/SELOXOqa3II\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re like me, who isn\u2019t big on social media, you\u2019d think that the image filters that come inside most apps will do the job. But for many others, especially <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-14515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t