Shots puts a selfie inside a selfie for twice the fun

What’s more fun than a selfie? Why, a selfie within a selfie, of course.

Shots, the app that seeks to exemplify the youth-oriented selfie phenomenon—touting a Justin Bieber zeitgeist while proudly taking its place on Apple’s App Store Selfie shelf—has launched an intriguing feature to the new upgrade it’s releasing today: the Reply Shot.

The app’s new Reply Shot feature lets users directly answer a selfie with another selfie, embedding the second shot into a new original shot. Why? “So people can interact more directly through their selfies,” said John Shahidi, who co-founded Shots with his brother Sam, plus a little help from tween heartthrob, Justin Bieber.

Let people deride the selfies as narcissistic inanity all they want (and with Ellen, President Obama, and a host of other decidedly serious, smart folk climbing on board, that taunt is starting to sound a  tad tired), but the Shahidi brothers take a paternal attitude toward Shots’ youthful audience of 13-24 year olds, and are intent on keeping Shots a safe, positive community.

Shots may be wall-to-wall people, but the atmosphere stays friendly because of strict controls over the aspects of social networking that are known to make even mature adults miserable. The following are prohibited: filters, uploading old photos from the camera roll, and comments—yes comments. The app uses only the front-facing camera in a bid to eliminate catfishing, fake accounts and false identities.

For Shots’ audience, which the company says is 75 percent females under the age of 24, it’s all about portraits, relationships, and, well, great selfies. It’s not how many followers and friends you have—you can follow other people and comment, but all that social activity is private.

Other updates released today include timeline search to make it easier to search for and discover new friends, and language localization in Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish (Mexico).

➤ Shots

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