What's interesting is that they were able to raise $4 million, and rejected a $40 million acquisition by Twitter
(according to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/frontback-app-shuts-down-2015-7" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/frontback-app-shuts-down-2015...</a>)
When I first saw the Interview (Mike Arrington did the Interview at Tech Crunch Disrupt), I was really disappointed with their answer to something like "So When is Android Version scheduled?", CEO went on saying how great iPhone is.<p>This was 2 years back. How can you not be working on Android version by then?
Apropos of nothing relevant to the actual content of the page, the sand effect easter egg on the logo was really cool. One of the more lifelike effects I've seen.
What was the business model for this? Get a lot of users and get bought like Instagram? $40m for $4m seems like a great return for something that doesn't have revenue.
Their thing seems to have been that they recorded (video or image I guess) the subject as well as the publisher at the same time, recording with both cameras. Nice idea.<p>Image preview here:<p><a href="https://pando-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2013/10/frontback1.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://pando-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2013/10/frontb...</a>
I wonder how much it costs to keep this type of thing running? There's really no one out there stepping up to take it on?<p>Edit: after reading the shutdown notice, it was a little vague about what's happening. It says the iOS app will convert to a camera app. Does that mean they are gonna try to retain connections to all the existing users and roll out out some new concept?
It's a cute feature but hardly something that you could build a company around. Like Yo.<p>In a case like this, do they ever transfer the service over to someone who might be interested in having a go at it (without any money exchanging hands)? Always seems like people would rather shut something down than hand it over which is unfortunate.
I'm an active user of this app. I really enjoy scrolling through app feed and discover people around the world by not just their selfies but also a proper image context attached with it. I'm in love with the idea of this app. Really sad to see they are shutting down the service :'(
Sorry to read about this.<p>I too regarded Frontback as a feature rather than a new messaging paradigm. But I can see how you might say the same about Snapchat.
Barely one month to be able to download your stored photos - that seems ... Short. Especially for a service that was not used often enough. I don't clearly have any details but keeping an AWS account up for another 3-6 moths seems ... Not unreasonable.<p>I understand it's a crushing time for the founders, but one of the things I seem to see on HN is the more respectably you wind down your startup, the more respect (and future deal flow) you seem to get.<p>Just 2c