Hip­sta­mat­ic is an app that was launched back in Decem­ber of 2011 as D‑Series. It was one of the first in the pho­to app mar­ket to intro­duce lo-fi instant cam­era or vin­tage aes­thet­ics from any era to your pho­tos. Unfor­tu­nate­ly it was blown out of the water by none oth­er than Insta­gram. Hip­sta­mat­ic founder and CEO Lucas Allen Buick had explained that they were hav­ing a real hard time mon­e­tiz­ing the prod­uct and ser­vice issues made it impos­si­ble to keep the app going even though they had 2 mil­lion down­loads in under a year.

The iPhone app has just launched a brand new col­lab­o­ra­tive social pho­to com­po­nent avail­able on iTunes right now called DSPO [pro­nounced Dis-po]. Buick explains that a lot of new tech­nol­o­gy such as Apple’s Cloud­Kit have afford­ed Hip­sta­mat­ic a real chance to get back at it again but the mar­ket is even more com­pet­i­tive three years lat­er. “There aren’t many oppor­tu­ni­ties in life nor busi­ness when we are pre­sent­ed with a redo,” Buick said. “I’m so hap­py to get this oppor­tu­ni­ty. I just hope we got it right this time.”

So DSPO is a social cam­era designed to get peo­ple to chat about and share pho­tos. They’re bet­ting on this social fea­ture to attract new users using Face­book. “First and fore­most, DSPO is about col­lab­o­ra­tion and com­mu­nal expe­ri­ences,” Buick said. In the old days peo­ple would take pho­tos and have to wait till the shots were devel­oped, with this prod­uct a group would in the­o­ry be shar­ing that roll of film and have to wait in antic­i­pa­tion till they were ready. Hip­sta­mat­ic is free for the iPhone. If you’re inter­est­ed in pay­ing an in-app fee, you can get more in the way of fil­ters or even scrib­ble on your pic­ture with a col­ored pen, mark­er or highlighter.

The user first cre­ates a group, then sets a timer; this can range from one hour all the way up to a year, then can even invite friends via Twit­ter. There is a mes­sag­ing fea­ture which means friends can chat while this pho­to shoot is devel­op­ing, yet remem­ber no one is able to see the pics until the set dead­line expires. DSPO is the first Hip­sta­mat­ic prod­uct that lets you apply the fil­ters lat­er so you don’t pause and pull away from the flow of things.

Hip­sta­mat­ic envi­sions DSPO as a com­pan­ion for con­cert-goers, wed­ding guests, and oth­er events where you can just chat and shoot. “If you’re at a con­cert and the band tweets out a link to their cam­era for the show, every­one can con­tribute and you’ll get the event from all dif­fer­ent angles. This works for wed­dings, fes­ti­vals, camp­ing trips. It’s the desire to want to be part of the cam­era that will get peo­ple to down­load,” says Mario Estra­da, Hipstamatic’s vice pres­i­dent of spe­cial projects.

The tricky part to this whole endeav­or is if you can even find enough friends to make a social album fun, espe­cial­ly if your pals are not into the whole “down­load­ing” thing or even using apps and con­vinc­ing them to wait till you’re done with all the pho­tos. There are a whole bunch of fun fea­tures though like Bright, Clean, Mono, Vin­tage, Clear, and write a cap­tion. Lit­tle icons under­neath the fil­ters depict emo­tions like hap­py or sad, mer­ry or yum­my. C’mon that’s cute right? Is this whole thing gonna work? Who knows, but it sure seems like a good sec­ond try.

If this kind of thing appeals to you, maybe you should look clos­er, per­haps even work for a com­pa­ny that won’t quit, you’re hip, get in the door while you still can.Bottom of Form