Popular app Dubsmash bids good-bye after years of fame

Popular app Dubsmash which was launched in 2014 has shut down. Dubsmash is a short-video social sharing app with innovative camera and editing features. A rival to short video platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, Dubsmash carries similar in-app camera features such as filters, stickers, and voice changers. Aside from this, Dubsmash also lets users trim, crop, and edit videos taken or edited from other applications. In 2020, Reddit acquired Dubsmash in a bid to solidify its arms in the race to be the top short video-sharing app in the world. And ever since then, Reddit has worked on integrating several of the best Dubsmash features into the main Reddit app. Which means there's no longer a need to maintain Dubsmash as a standalone app. In 2020, Reddit acquired Dubsmash in a bid to solidify its arms in the race to be the top short video-sharing app in the world. And ever since then, Reddit has worked on integrating several of the best Dubsmash features into the main Reddit app. Which means there's no longer a need to maintain Dubsmash as a standalone app.In the early years of Dubsmash, celebrities flocked to the app. In 2015, Rihanna teased the release of her single “B---- Better Have My Money” by posting a preview on Dubsmash. Also that year, Selena Gomez and Jimmy Fallon played around with the app on the comedian’s show.

When Reddit acquired Dubsmash, the app was drawing more than one billion video views per month, and about 30% of users logged in daily to make videos. In the acquisition announcement, Reddit chief executive officer Steve Huffman said the two platforms could “coexist and grow as we learn from each other”. Dubsmash head Suchit Dash added: “We want to continue our journey to bring best-in-class video products to our users, and now Reddit users.”This week, according to announcement on Reddit’s blog, Dubsmash will go dark entirely. It will no longer be available to download on Apple or Google’s app stores, and the app will stop working for existing users. “Combining forces has been a perfect match,” Huffman said in the post about Dubsmash’s demise. “Dubsmashers can continue connecting with each other at r/dubsmash.”Michael Sayman, who worked on Instagram Stories at Facebook as Dubsmash took off, said that he had kept close tabs on the app during its rise. At the annual VidCon conference, Sayman said, “I remember seeing all the young teens, tweens, running around, and one of the products they were using was Dubsmash.” Now, he perused the app’s listing on the Apple App Store and saw a product that was a shell of its former self. “‘Great alternative to TikTok if you cosplay,’ that’s one of the top reviews with the most thumbs up,” Sayman said. “To see it be reduced to that type of framing, was there anything they could’ve done differently in the past to avoid this?”Paris Simone, a 19-year-old TikTok creator, has fond memories of the app. “I was in high school and it was the app of the school,” Simone said. When they had spare time, she and her friends would set up their phones in the corner of an empty room and learn dances off Dubsmash. She said she’s disappointed to watch the app shut down. Dubsmash gave her a place to watch other Black creators become successful, and helped her gain confidence in her dance skills.