App Showcase: Celebs

What it does

Celebs is a photo entertainment app that analyzes a user's selfie to find their celebrity lookalike. The core function involves uploading a photo, which the app's technology then compares against a database of famous people to generate a percentage match. Beyond celebrities, the app also offers a quirky feature to find the user's dog breed lookalike.

Where it shines

The app's primary strength lies in its simple, focused user experience and the novelty of its results. The core loop is quick and satisfying. A user can go from uploading a photo (00:49) to seeing a polished result card in about 15 seconds (01:03). The visual design of the result, which morphs the user's photo into the celebrity's, is a nice touch. The standout feature is the ability to switch categories and find a dog lookalike (01:15), adding a humorous and highly shareable element to the experience.

UX highlights

• Clear Core Loop: The app guides the user through a simple three-step process: upload, analyze, and view results. There's little ambiguity.
• Engaging Loading State: While processing a photo, the app displays a custom loading animation with expanding pink circles (00:57), which is more engaging than a standard spinner.
• Visual Result Morph: The celebrity lookalike result screen (01:03) includes a subtle animation that blends the user's face with their celebrity match, visually reinforcing the connection.
• Multi-Category Discovery: Toggling between 'Celebs', 'Dogs', and 'Friends' (01:12) is an intuitive way to explore the app's different features without cluttering the main screen.
• Simple Sharing Options: The results screen provides prominent, clear buttons for sharing to popular platforms or saving the image to the camera roll (01:08), encouraging virality.

Monetization & growth

The app employs an upfront subscription model. After a very brief onboarding, the user is immediately presented with a paywall (00:23) before they can use the core feature. It offers a 3-day free trial for a weekly subscription, a common strategy to lower the barrier to conversion. The paywall clearly lists the benefits of subscribing, such as an ad-free experience and the ability to save results. This indicates a strategy focused on converting users based on the promise of the app's value, rather than demonstrating it first.

Who it’s for

The app is designed for a broad, casual audience interested in lighthearted entertainment and social media trends. Its primary users are likely active on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, where sharing lookalike results is popular. The simple interface makes it accessible to a wide range of age groups, and the dual celebrity/animal matching feature appeals to anyone looking for a fun and shareable digital novelty.

Notes & opportunities

The onboarding flow is quite aggressive, hitting the user with multiple permission and rating prompts before they've done anything (00:06 - 00:17). This creates significant upfront friction that could cause some users to drop off. While the core lookalike feature works well, the app could benefit from adding more context or fun facts about the celebrity match to deepen the engagement beyond just the visual comparison.