There have been many apps and website combinations out there in the social media category, and it is a very hard marketplace to get into. Instagram has proved to be the top photo sharing application on mobile devices, and there have been many others that have tried to tap into that category. One mobile application that has successfully made its own foot print in the photo social media category is Foap. It is a web and mobile application combination where you can upload photos that you take with your phone to post and have the chance for someone, or a company to purchase your photos.

It is used by anybody from the casual teenager taking selfies to the dedicated professional photographer to post their favorite photos throughout their day. Users compete in competitions, known as missions, posted by companies in need of category specific photos for big cash prizes. Users have the capability to vote on photos based on a 0 through 5 star rating and also be able to purchase any photo on the application or website for $5 with exclusive rights. Companies or people in the business of buying/selling photos also have the option to buy credit packages where they can gain discounts on mass amounts of photos.

In recent updates, Foap developers have brought new user interface features, along with advanced sharing options to a lot of the mainstream social media platforms. The application has also integrated a newsfeed tab, showing the activity of the community and on your profile. Users have also complained about the need to rate 5 others photos in order to upload one photo, and so they have changed how users upload photos. They no longer require you to vote on others photos to upload, as well as allowing users to upload multiple photos at once and a dedicated tab to managing photos. Within this section, you have the ability to modify the current photos you have uploaded from the title, description, and tags used to search for the photo. Foap also uses legal verification on each profile to ensure that people are who they say they are, and if a user uploads photos that aren’t theirs, they can be legally accountable for it. This is a problem that has proven consistent across all photo posting applications on the market.

In the future, the app needs to keep enhancing the user experience to maintain users and functionality. Currently, there are a few issues with its core functions, such as bugs with the user’s devices interacting through the network and into the database. There are numerous errors with losing sync to the database when uploading photos and not querying data consistently. Foap also needs to figure out a way to promote the rating of photos and give people a reason to rate others photos. Developers also need to make it easier to find other people similar photos to yours and make it easier to keep you up to date with the people you follow, and the photos they upload.

There are a lot of photo related apps out there, but there are only a couple in the category with Foap. The closest competitor to Foap is Scoopshot, where they boast a lot of the exact same features. There are resemblances on their websites, and their apps are similar as well. However, Foap is superior in the user interface and execution in the development of the application’s functionality. Scoopshot is superior in the category of users selling their photos by allowing them to set their own prices on their photos, and allowing them to make more appropriate money for their photos. They also more creative in the execution of some of the features, but Foap proves to be much more simple in its processes and easy to understand in each and every function. Scoopshot and Foap are quite equal in the missions/contests section, for they both allow you to get noticed by publishers and brands.