Late last month<\/a> the\u00a0startup told TechCrunch it had a social feature in the works, after having its access to the Facebook Live API cut off, shuttering\u00a0a livestreaming broadcast feature it had launched via\u00a0Facebook\u2019s\u00a0platform. Now Prisma is hoping to build its own walled garden. The Feed, as they\u2019re calling the new social feature, lets users share photos\u00a0they\u2019ve stylized\u00a0with other Prisma users.<\/p>\n The location-based twist is that shared photos are\u00a0organized by proximity, so you\u2019ll get to see nearer imagery\u00a0by default. So shades of Color<\/a>,\u00a0then\u00a0\u2014\u00a0aka the photo-sharing app that failed\u00a0to build momentum behind location-based social sharing all the way back in 2011. Still, five years is several ice ages in tech terms so perhaps the novelty-seeking mobile users of today can be convinced of the value of proximity-based image\u00a0sharing now they\u2019re a lot more accustomed to eyeballing content from around the global web.<\/p>\n Although\u00a0the strength of location as a pure social connector is pretty questionable IMO. And\u00a0it remains to be seen whether an entire social feed of photos stylized with the same set of algorithmic filters will be able to pull users away from the places they can and do already share stuff \u2014\u00a0e.g\u00a0Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter etc. (Not to mention all the lesser used social sharing options, be it Ello, Google+, Path etc\u2026)<\/p>\n Prisma says it\u2019s been testing the new\u00a0social Feed in\u00a0several countries, with some 15,000 users, and claims feedback so far has been \u201camazing\u201d. But such positivity papers over the huge challenge\u00a0ahead of it in trying to make its\u00a0art effects stand on their own two feet as a\u00a0fully fledged social platform \u2014 rather than, as it has\u00a0so far been, a tool for injecting\u00a0a little\u00a0visual novelty into\u00a0other, more\u00a0popular platforms.<\/p>\n Part of what makes\u00a0Prisma so appealing is\u00a0also arguably its simplicity \u2014 and it\u2019s now sacrificing some of that as it seeks to transform into platform by requiring users register so they can be looped into the community\u00a0it\u2019s hoping to build.<\/p>\n The app\u00a0originally\u00a0rocketed to\u00a0attention this summer when its eye-catching effects\u00a0grabbed millions of Instagram users\u2019 eyeballs as people\u00a0shared its\u00a0art filtered photos\u00a0with their existing networks. But while piggybacking on other social platforms\u00a0generated early momentum for Prisma, allowing it to rack up more than 70 million downloads and garner some 2M+ daily active users in a matter of months, it also resulted in fast following copy-cats \u2014 including Facebook<\/a>, which started\u00a0rolling out its own\u00a0style transfer features this fall.<\/p>\n So Prisma is caught between a rock and a hard place; if it sticks to its knitting as just a cool tool it risks becoming redundant as others clone its USP. But turning a cool feature into a social platform in a digital world dominated by so many well resourced social giants is a task that would have Sisyphus sweating.<\/p>\n To their credit, though,\u00a0the Prisma team are\u00a0shouldering the boulder and putting their feet on the mountain path\u00a0\u2014 so you have to admire their pluck. They\u2019re hoping to fire up\u00a0a community of Prisma sharers quickly by building in viral rewards. So this means content shared to\u00a0the Feed can be liked by others \u2014 and the more likes a photo\u00a0garners, the greater potential visibility it gets by \u201cfurther increasing its range of appearing on people\u2019s feed\u201d, as they put it.<\/p>\n \u201cTheoretically, a user can post a picture, get likes and watch his or her post spread and cover the whole world,\u201d says the team.<\/p>\n![\"GeoFeed\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/RSSPoster_PRO\/cache\/ea9de_slice2.png?resize=640%2C408\")
<\/a><\/p>\n