In 2017, Business Insider predicted that an app called Marco Polo would supplant Snapchat 1 day. Spoiler alert: information technology hasn't. Yet, during the pandemic, the app has thrived past making casual video messaging accessible for people more than interested in keeping touch with former friends than sending thirst traps or tuning into celebrity confessionals.

A few weeks into lockdown in March, Marco Polo soared to No. 21 on Apple'southward almost downloaded apps chart and has since ranked as high as No. viii on their height social networking apps list. The app saw a 745% increase in sign-ups the week of March 30 solitary, reports The Verge . The company backside Marco Polo didn't release numbers, but claims at that place are "millions" of people on the app. Those millions include Ice-T, who tweeted well-nigh how much he loved the app and P!nk, who listed Marco Polo among her isolation coping mechanisms. Amy Poehler and Seth Myers discussed Marco Polo-ing each other on a virtual Late Night segment in April.

But, since its initial explosion during quarantine, Marco Polo has dropped down to No. 54 on the App Store's social networking list. Can the app go on to thrive without mass lockdowns?

Groundwork

So what is Marco Polo exactly? The app'south actual functions are, as suggested, very similar to Snapchat. Both apps permit you lot ping-pong video messages back and along. Marco Polo even calls itself a "visual walkie-talkie." The app'south proper noun comes from the phone call-and-response messaging format — you send a friend a "Marco" video, they can answer with a "Polo" at their leisure. Snapchat turned this unit of communication — a "snap" —  into the ground of a social media platform. Users rely on Snapchat for entertainment, post their content publicly, follow users they don't know, and consume content from brands, influencers, and celebrities. Marco Polo, on the other hand, distinctly opposes  this kind ofsocial media network.

"The app is designed to exist for the people you feel closest to, not the world," co-founder Vlada Bortnik tells Vogue . Despite its functional similarity to Snapchat, Marco Polo is positioned in the personal advice earth as a competitor of FaceTime, Zoom, Skype or Google Hangouts, with flexibility as its selling signal. "Polos" are an easy yet intimate style to catch up with friends and family unit without having to attend weekly calls for each of your circles. "With people you lot honey, texts and social media don't give the whole picture and calls are hard to schedule," the app'southward website warns.

Bortnik and her husband Michal were a pair of engineers looking for ways to stay in touch with family unit overseas. They created Marco Polo in 2012 and launched in 2016, aslope a moving ridge of communication apps that blew up during quarantine like Houseparty and Tribe. It's the flagship app of the Bortniks' company Joya Communications , which has since produced Cleo, a personal budgeting app and FlipLid an app that adds vox furnishings and face-filters to your Facebook Messenger. It started gaining buzz in Silicon Valley leading upwardly to its launch, and by 2016, had raised around $twenty meg , including cash from VC firm Criterion, which has a rail tape of hand-picking offset-ups for earth domination, sitting on the board of Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and Nextdoor.

🤿 Deep Swoop

xc% of Snapchat users are between the ages of 13 and 24. Marco Polo hasn't provided demographic data, only based on the age bracket of its glory endorsers and glowing op-eds written by parents, Marco Polo has discovered a market for short-form video chatting that its competitor misses.

" It's then much more than vivid and intimate to see each other'south faces—and go our girls' night; our mom group; our lifeline when we are crying out for connectedness," reads a Vogue story titled ' An ode to Marco Polo, the App Getting Parents Through the Pandemic.' A source with kids tells the magazine that she and her friends use Marco Polo "share arts and crafts ideas, recipes and hot tips on which stores are nevertheless stocked with supplies," merely likewise has turned to it "in her toughest moments." Given the ages of Snapchat's user base of operations, it seems unlikely that like conversations are happening on the platform.

From its beach ball emoji to its simplified user interface, Marco Polo's wholesome experience has made Snapchat's brand of low-stakes, casual video chatting accessible and relevant for parents, boomers and thirty-somethings. " The asynchronicity of Polo makes it feel like FaceTime, but at your leisure, assuasive friends to record and share heart-to-hearts without break," Vogue writes.

Marco Polo is generally intended for users to talk to people they already know. Only, in the same way teenagers use Snapchat to flirt, older people are takin g reward of video conversation run into-cutes. Brides Magazine interviewed several Marco Polo users who dated using the app, including some who ended up engaged. "Information technology was an intimate enough setting to deepen a friendship without some of the awkwardness that can come up in the early stages of getting to know someone," said Ballad Tran Reynolds, who dated her now-husband over Marco Polo after coming together him at work.

One of Marco Polo's biggest pitches for why it'southward the best video chatting app for families is its promise to stay advert-complimentary and never sell data to advertisers. Of class, this creates questions virtually its fiscal sustainability, as ads are the number 1 way free apps monetize. "At that place is a space for group and family video that has not been tapped into, so there is a value proposition for Marco Polo. The question is, how much is it worth for consumers," Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Inquiry Inc posed to Silicon Angle back in 2016 when Marco Polo launched.

Marco Polo forced users to answer this question when information technology rolled out Marco Polo Pro in June, which, to many users dismay, put previously free features behind a $5 monthly membership paywall . " We want Marco Polo to exist advertisement-free and effectually forever," the announcement on the app's website reads. "Now is the fourth dimension when we need to make our business a sustainable one."

A number of negative reviews most the paid features racked up on the app store. But thank you to months of hooking people on the features for free, some loyal users see the fee every bit a small price to pay. In an op-ed Worcester Magazine , Sarah Connell Sanders, a teacher, gushed that, thanks to the app, she's closer to her one-time college friends than she's been in "decades." She was dismayed when Marco Polo Plus rolled out, meaning she'd have to pay for central features. Still, she says, "I have used Marco Polo every single solar day since I downloaded the app in March... I don't know how I would have managed the near grueling months without information technology."

📌 Production Characteristic Highlights

Groups

When yous arrive on Marco Polo's domicile screen, a list of your chats with individual friends and various groups awaits you. In App Shop reviews and coverage of the app, the fun of group chats — one for each of your circles: siblings, work friends, college friends — is key to Marco Polo'southward appeal. " Polo has largely replaced our text chain," Faddy's review reads. Group chats compile all the videos its members send to each other, for each member to watch and reply to on their own fourth dimension.

Annal

Unlike Snapchat, Marco Polo doesn't limit message length or delete the messages you send after a certain corporeality of time. Instead, information technology stores all Polos on the cloud, creating an annal for each grouping that serves every bit a video photo album. Some have plant this feature charming. Sanders wrote for Worcester Magazine: " My friends joke that I am actually saving the stream of hundreds of video clips for a future fine art installation that will examine life in the time of COVID… The truth is, a lot of of import moments take taken identify over Marco Polo for us this yr."

Marco Polo Plus

The Marco Polo Plus update left non-paying users with only bare-basic features. Based on App Store complaints, the "2x" role — which lets you fast forrard through messages at 1.5-3x speed — is 1 of the app's most beloved features. Information technology's now unavailable to not-paying users. Co-ordinate to Faddy, users even referred to the feature as a verb: "'2x me' is a frequent, cocky-aware refrain in my Polo groups, when someone finds themselves getting long-winded in the centre of a message."

Marco Polo is for video-chatting, but it has all-purpose options for Marco Polo Plus members. When you're not camera ready, you tin can besides chime into the conversation via vocalism recordings, photos you snap or plucked from your gallery or written text. Marco Polo Plus also offers a group conversation "scratchpad" for users to draft responses.

Marco Polo's aesthetic is the polar opposite of Snapchat. Information technology'due south clean and uncluttered, no ads, no gadgets, no toys, no bold colors. This is something people initially praised. However, in recent updates, the app has added a few playful features. It offers Apple Photobooth-era filters (think "sepia"), only zilch as flashy Instagram Story's face up-tuning animations. Like on Instagram Live, you tin can react to other people'due south Polos with emojis every bit you watch them. Hard disk drive is another Plus feature for those who want a crisper paradigm.

👁️‍🗨️ Final Verdict

Marco Polo doesn't appear to be seriously challenging Snapchat or touching its lesser line, especially given the latter app has institute success expanding into editorial and TV content. On the contrary, Snapchat's social media stats are solid and its parent company Snap'due south stock has been soaring in recent weeks, currently up 158% yr-over-twelvemonth. This makes sense: its loudest fans are people who were highly unlikely to be on Snapchat in the commencement place.

Marco Polo could actually make a dent by introducing older users to casual, brusk-grade video messaging and showing them information technology can replace hours on Zoom and FaceTime. Quarantine might exist lifting, but a third wave of the virus looms and people are merely getting more exhausted with video calls. Marco Polo's applied uses for staying in touch with friends and family during quarantine has boosted its popularity. And if the app can get adults as addicted to pinging friends and family at all times of the day as Snapchat did with teenagers and twenty-somethings, Marco Polo will stick around.

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