Locket App Gains Celebrity Focus to Boost Growth

Locket App Leverages Celebrity Engagement for Growth

The photo-sharing application, Locket, which distinguishes itself by displaying shared images as widgets on users’ home screens, is implementing a new strategy to maintain user interest. This involves collaborations with prominent figures in the entertainment industry.

A Unique Approach to Social Connection

Launched in 2022, Locket quickly positioned itself as an alternative to BeReal, emphasizing a more genuine method of connecting with friends. The application utilizes a widget placed on iPhone home screens, dynamically updating with the latest photos contributed by a user’s network.

Users have the ability to curate a close-knit group of up to 20 friends, fostering a private environment for sharing unedited photos and life updates.

Impressive User Statistics and Profitability

The app reports exceeding 80 million total downloads and boasts over 9 million daily active users. To date, more than 10 billion photos have been shared through the platform. Significantly, the company has also revealed to TechCrunch that it achieved profitability in 2024.

This financial success is particularly noteworthy considering the company’s relatively limited fundraising, having secured only $12.5 million in funding.

Introducing “Celebrity Lockets”

To further stimulate growth, Locket has been quietly piloting a feature known as “Celebrity Lockets” for the past six months. The official announcement of this feature was made on Wednesday.

How Celebrity Lockets Work

This feature primarily targets musicians, providing a channel for them to interact with fans by sharing information regarding upcoming performances, new album releases, and other relevant announcements.

Locket has already initiated testing with artists such as Suki Waterhouse and JVKE, with plans to onboard additional artists in the near future.

Celebrities can distribute a link via their social media channels, or fans can search for them within the app to establish a connection. This allows for direct photo sharing to fans’ home screens.

Immediacy and Intimacy

“The direct delivery of posts to fans’ home screens provides a level of immediacy and intimacy that is difficult for other platforms to match,” explained founder Matt Moss to TechCrunch. “This transforms passive followers into engaged participants.”

Fan Engagement and Growth Metrics

Artists can specify the number of fans they wish to connect with, ranging from 1,000 to 15,000. For example, Suki Waterhouse has connected with 5,000 fans through the app, contributing to the acquisition of new Locket users.

The company reports that 17% of these 5,000 fans were new to the Locket platform.

Preserving the Locket Experience

“Fans appreciate the exclusivity of being among a select few thousand, rather than simply being another follower,” Moss stated. “This maintains the inherent intimacy and brand identity of Locket. We observed that our community frequently shared music with their friends, so enabling connections with their favorite artists represents a logical progression for the platform.”

Potential Challenges and Comparisons

While initial feedback from testing has been positive, the ultimate impact of this feature on Locket’s user growth remains uncertain. BeReal previously experimented with a similar feature, “RealPeople,” but the response was mixed.

Some users expressed a preference for the app as a space to avoid interactions with celebrities.