Retro Launches Collab Journals

As big social apps are optimizing for maximum engagement using algorithmic feeds and personalized content recommendations, Retro wants to go in the opposite direction: The company is launching a new feature called journals. It’s a flexible way to share photos with your favorite people and create visual records of whatever matters in your life. So the feature can be akin to a shared photo album or used to keep a private record. Photo-sharing isn’t new. Many have tried, most have failed. But it’s important to pay attention to Retro given the résumé of the founding team. The relatively new social app was created by Nathan Sharp and Ryan Olson, two former Instagram team members who played an important role in shipping breakthrough features such as Stories.