We continue with the series of Chinese-Instagram applications (see our earlier feature on Tuding).
Based in the city of Xi’an, Lemeleme (originally called lomolomo) was founded in 2009 by Mr CUI Gang. Mr Cui has been working in the Internet apps field since 1996. Lemeleme has a 50-person team of research and development. First began development since Oct 2010, the first version was launched in Dec 2010, only in English and with in-app purchase of US$1 per filter effect. Within four months of its release, Lemeleme reached 2 million downloads internationally in end of March.
On Apr.1, 2011, photo taking app Lomolomo launched its Chinese version and changed its name to Lemeleme. The new version removed paid filters option and now offers all filters for free. Since the upgrade, Lemeleme has seen a spike of interest with 320,000 weekly downloads, that is over 1 million additional users in a month. Currently, nearly 50% of its active users are from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.
Not An Instagram Clone; Building a Super Camera
Jo Yin, Lemeleme VP of Marketing claims that Lemeleme focuses on photo-taking mobile internet market, aiming to make up smartphone camera deficiencies in order to replace of traditional digital camera one day. They target to develop a “super camera” with features including:
- Auto-focused camera;
- Resolution upgrade from iPhone’s 5 megapixels to 12 megapixels;
- 16 unique filters
Lemeleme supports nine social network platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, Renren, Kaixin001, Sina Weibo, and Tencent Weibo. That said, Lemeleme differs from Instagram that it allows an opt-out function from sharing, in case users would like to keep the photos for private collection.
Lemeleme currently only supports iPhone and iPad platform, while Android system is coming this month.
Recording Experiences Globally, Locally in 36,000 Destinations
According to Jo Yin, exploring popular photos uploaded by users global wide by locations is Lemeleme’s another specialty. Reserved sufficient technical storage for LBS when the team firstly worked on travel related app in 2009, Lemeleme now has large amount of data for 36,000 destinations all over the world. That is a cool thing to see fun photos just taken in Paris or Egypt by another user living in the other hemisphere.
Love it. Would be cool if you could make the English version for Andriod.