Motribe brings Instagram-style filters to Mxit

Motribe is best known for building mobile social networks, but the company is seems to be getting into another niche: building photo-based apps for Mxit.

The South African-based company recently launched JudgeMe, an app that helps people meet each other by uploading and browsing photos. Today meanwhile saw it officially announce the launch MxPix — an app that makes photo sharing and filtering possible for people with feature phones.

JudgeMe was well received, gaining over 400 000 users less than a month after launching. Following a stealth launch MxPix is showing similarly strong potential for growth.

The numbers put out by MoTribe include:

• Signups: 33 245
• Photos uploaded: 16 955
• Likes: 37 059
• Page views: 1 540 944

The app gives users the choice of filters and frames to enhance their photos. According MoTribe CTO Vincent Maher the company initially thought they might be taking a bit of a gamble with the app:

Initially we were a bit worried that applying Instagram-type filters to photos might be a little too hipster for the Mxit community but they have embraced it with more enthusiasm than we expected. This may be because it’s really hard to do this kind of thing to photos using a Samsung E250 or a Nokia 3110.

Motribe says it’ll start really pushing the product next week. If the uptake on JudgeMe is anything to go by (the company claims it went from nought to one-million users in 42 days) we could suddenly see a lot more filtered photos of hipsters who think “smartphones are too mainstream”.