Chroma Labs
App to create stylish layout templates to post on social media.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | investor | €0.0 | round |
| investor | €0.0 | round | |
* | N/A | Acquisition | |
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
Chroma Labs was a technology firm that developed mobile applications for editing photos and videos, specifically for social media stories. Founded in 2018 by a team of former Facebook and Instagram employees, the company aimed to provide tools to inspire creativity and help people tell their visual stories. The founders included John Barnett, who famously invented Instagram's 'Boomerang' feature, along with Alex Li, a former engineering manager for Facebook Photos and Instagram Stories, and Joshua Harris, who was a product design manager on Facebook's augmented reality team. Their collective experience in social media product development, including launching Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories, provided a strong foundation for Chroma Labs' offerings.
The company's flagship product was the 'Chroma Stories' app, a supplementary tool designed for creators and businesses to produce high-quality visual content for platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. The app offered a range of features, including layout templates, collage tools, dynamic motion presets, unique filters, and various fonts to enhance photos and videos. It supported both photo and video formats, allowing users to craft engaging stories that could be directly shared on social platforms. The business model for Chroma Stories included in-app purchases, with options for monthly or yearly subscriptions to unlock all features. Before its acquisition, the app had been downloaded approximately 615,000 times.
In February 2020, Twitter acquired Chroma Labs for an undisclosed amount in a full acquisition, not just an 'acqui-hire'. Following the deal, the seven-person Chroma Labs team joined Twitter's product, design, and engineering groups, specifically within the Conversations division, with the goal of giving users more creative ways to express themselves on the platform. As part of the acquisition, Chroma Labs shut down its business operations, and while the existing app remained functional for those who had it installed, it received no further updates.
Keywords: photo editing, video editing, social media tools, story editor, collage maker, mobile application, visual storytelling, Instagram Stories, creative tools, content creation, boomerang, layout templates, photo filters, video filters, social media content, Chroma Stories, John Barnett, Alex Li, Joshua Harris, Twitter acquisition