The first time hundreds of millions of people heard about Bitstrips was when its customised comic strips started appearing in their Facebook news feeds in October, en masse.

1. What Happened To Bitstrips 2016
2. Bitmoji Bitstrips
3. Bitstrips Create Character
4. What Happened To Bitstrips Comics
5. Whatever Happened To Bitstrips

Bitstrips has since gone on to become the second most-downloaded iOS app in the world in November, with the Canadian company raising $3m of funding just as its app topped app store charts around the world. But who is Bitstrips, why did it become so popular so quickly, and what will it do next?

A chat with chief executive and creative director Jacob Blackstock (known as 'BA' to friends and colleagues) provides some answers hinting that Bitstrips may be more than just the latest short-lived app craze. Starting with the fact that there's a longer backstory than you might think.

'I've been drawing since I was a little kid. I started taking animation classes when I was six years old, using stop-motion animation and Super-8 film,' says Blackstock. 'My mom has boxes and boxes of my old sketchbooks and comics! I would either draw comics in class instead of paying attention, or draw comics for my school projects. So I'd either get in trouble for doing them or get good grades depending on the situation, but comics have been a lifelong passion.'

Blackstock was also a voracious comics reader and cartoons viewer from an early age, falling in with a group of close friends who shared these interests, and would gather after school to read comics, but also draw their own, selling some of them at the local comics store.

What Happened To Bitstrips 2016

'As we got older, in high school we'd really use comics as a way to interact. We'd put each other into comics to make each other laugh, to embarrass each other, or to get each other into trouble,' he says, adding that even when Blackstock and his co-founders had jobs, they'd still fax 'embarrassing pictures' of one another as pranks.

'We were always engaged in what you could call the analogue version of Bitstrips,' he says. Blackstock spent 18 months developing an animated TV series which wasn't made, then spent three years making it himself, frame-by-frame, funding it by running animation workshops for children. Next, he set up a creative studio with those friends, with the idea for Bitstrips born in 2007, and launching as a standalone website in 2008.

Facebook 'Bitstrips' No More Users of Facebook may be familiar with 'Bitstrips,' cartoons that some used posted on their pages, and would appear on their friends' public feed like other posts. Unfortunately, it seems the Bitsrip fun is over. Someone who was a regular user posted this on her page on April 25. Bitstrips was a media and technology company based in Toronto, Canada. It develops and operates Bitmoji, a mobile application that allows users to create personalized avatars and use them in messaging applications. As of March 2016, Bitstrips has been operating as a subsidiary of Snap Inc.

Enjoy millions of the latest Android apps, games, music, movies, TV, books, magazines & more. Anytime, anywhere, across your devices. Bitstrips is a very funny app to create your own comic strips and it is very famous in Facebook, where users share funny illustrations with their friends as the main characters of them. The process is as simple as funny; you can create a lot of different avatars for your friends and put them in all kind of situations. The latest Tweets from Bitstrips (@bitstrips). Instant comics starring YOU and your friends!

The idea was pretty much the same as the mobile app that's been so popular in 2013: people created an avatar of themselves, then customised various comic-strip 'scenes' created by Bitstrips to create their own pithy stories, regardless of drawing skills or digital abilities.

“We kind of saw it as YouTube for comics. The technology had gotten to a point where we could share the fun that we’d been having with the rest of the world, and that might actually create some really amazing results,” says Blackstock. “We basically gave people a character-builder tool and a comic-builder tool, and let them go nuts. Which they did! We saw all these creative uses for it: people doing things with the tools that we’d made that we’d never even thought would be possible.”

That included teachers in North America starting to use Bitstrips in the classroom, leading the company to launch a version called Bitstrips for Schools. That's the second surprising thing about Bitstrips: its roots are as much in education as in entertainment, with its software licensed to all publicly-funded schools in its home province of Ontario thanks to a partnership with its Ministry of Education.

“Kids were getting really engaged with their schoolwork. It was a combination of the fact that they’re using this medium that they love – comics – which is really visual, appealing and expressive, and also the fact that they had the avatars in their work. They weren’t just communicating through comics, they were communicating through their own avatars,” says Blackstock.

“It’s thrilling, the idea that this gets kids excited about writing and reading. And we’ve heard incredible stories about kids who were having difficulties with the standard mode of writing text on blank paper, who then became prolific comic authors. We’ve also heard about autistic kids who were barely able to communicate, who were able to find a voice through Bitstrips. It’s been a really rewarding aspect of the tools we created.”

Bitstrips for Schools was also rewarding enough financially to fund the company as it worked on a new version of the main website, retooling it as a Facebook application which launched in 2012. By then, though, Blackstock and his colleagues had already realised that the service needed to go mobile.

“As soon as we launched the Facebook app, we were working on the mobile app, which we spent another year developing, and finally finished at the end of this summer,” says Blackstock. “We launched on Android at the end of August, then on iOS on 1 October. And two weeks after the iOS launch, it reached this tipping point and went mega viral.”

The proof of that was in hundreds of millions of people's Facebook news feeds in October and November. Until the mobile apps launched, people had created 10m avatars using Bitstrips' website and Facebook app – this is a rough measure of registered users, specifically those who'd signed up and created their character – but in the two months after its iOS and Android launch, another 30m were created.

Bitstrips isn't giving out more detailed statistics for now – for example on how many of those 30m new users are still active – but this chart published by Inside Facebook based on analytics from industry database AppData, shows the jump in monthly active users:

The huge spike came as a surprise to Bitstrips: “We were in testing mode. We thought of it as a stealth launch where we could find the bugs and put in more features, before officially launching it,” says Blackstock. “We never told anyone about it, never spent a penny on marketing, yet all of a sudden it was just exploding everywhere.”

Mobile analytics company App Annie claims that Bitstrips was the second most-downloaded app globally on Apple’s App Store in November, behind only MomentCam – a different personalised-comics app – but ahead of YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp and other big apps.

“It feels like one of those ‘overnight successes’ that was actually the product of seven years of toil,” says Blackstock, who notes that the viral effect – the average Bitstrip user has 50 friends who’ve created an avatar using the app – has been a big factor in the recent spike. “We see this as the app that turns your circle of friends into your own personal Springfield,’ he says, referencing The Simpsons.

What next? Continuing to feed this community, avoiding the Draw Something trajectory of burning brightly on the app store then fading away, and actually making money from the app. On the former count, Bitstrips launches four new comic strips a day, as well as a recent batch of more than 150 Christmas-themed strips for users to customise and share. More than 2,000 scenes are already available in the app, with plans to continue this approach.

“We’re able to do things that are really timely: when there are current events, we can have a comic about that within 24 hours. It’s a way for our users to participate in news, media and memes,” says Blackstock. “When the royal baby was born, we had a comic out that day in which you were the baby, and Prince William was holding you up Lion King style.”

Bitmoji Bitstrips

This may sound like novelty territory, but the ability to respond to topical events – or more accurately, to give people the tools to respond to them – is one of Bitstrips’ most interesting features, and part of a wider trend for tools (often apps) that remove the need to have, say, Photoshop skills to create and share visual content.

“It’s not just about jokes: it’s a really powerful way to communicate,” says Blackstock. “People are using this as a political platform for example. Whatever your message is, a picture is worth a thousand words.” Bitstrips is already fielding calls from some celebrities too, wondering how they can work with the company.

What about the second challenge: avoiding becoming another flash-in-the-pan app? Especially if Bitstrips becomes known as “that annoying comics app” by people who don’t really like the strips, and specifically don’t like dozens of them clogging up their Facebook feeds?

Bitstrips can't stop your friends and family over-sharing, but it does seem aware of the risks. It has already tweaked the app so users aren’t forced to share their comics to Facebook every time, for example: they can now choose to share them within Bitstrips alone, or via other means like Twitter and email.

Bitstrips Create Character

“We’re working on more stuff that’s really going to improve the experience of reading these comics within the app, receiving and even interacting with your friends’ content,” says Blackstock. He doesn’t talk about other forthcoming features, but I wonder if animation – moving Bitstrips – are on the company’s roadmap too: cartoons in the TV sense of the word, as well as the comic-strip sense.

The third challenge is how Bitstrips makes money, given that it doesn’t currently charge for the app or its scenes, nor does it carry advertising. In-app purchases are one likely avenue – premium scenes perhaps, in the same way that messaging apps like Line offer a mixture of free and paid stickers for people to send to friends.

Premium scenes might also be a way for Bitstrips to partner with celebrities, film studios and other popular brands – although it might also be able to charge brands to sponsor free scenes in the same way that websites like BuzzFeed sell “native advertising” that look like normal articles on the site.

“We’ve thought about those things, and we do have pretty detailed ideas. But we are really focused on growth and improving the experience right now,” says Blackstock, mirroring the words of other rapidly-growing-app entrepreneurs before him (see: Instagram, Snapchat, etc). “We still have a lot of work to do on the app to get it to where we want it to be before we start to look at those things. We don’t like apps that do things that detract from the experience, so we’ll make sure whatever we do is really true to the brand, and adds value.”

There are plenty of dangers for Bitstrips in the months ahead. Although it's broadening the ways people can share their comics with friends beyond Facebook, its reliance on the social network for viral growth so far puts it at risk if that virality is suddenly checked by a change in the news feed algorithm, as happened to video-sharing app Viddy last year.

'Starting soon, we’ll be doing a better job of distinguishing between a high quality article on a website versus a meme photo hosted somewhere other than Facebook when people click on those stories on mobile,” announced Facebook in a blog post on 2 December. “This means that high quality articles you or others read may show up a bit more prominently in your News Feed, and meme photos may show up a bit less prominently.”

Bitstrips will have to negotiate the ups and downs of news feed changes, but Blackstock says his company wants to prove that personalised, socially-shared comic strips are much more than a viral annoyance. In fact, he's got big ambitions for comics as tools of self-expression.

What Happened To Bitstrips Comics

“If you think about comics as a communication tool – this medium for self-expression – that’s a no-brainer for people making comics on their own already, but when you think about it as something that could be accessible to everyone, it’s potentially revolutionary. It’s like giving people typewriters for the first time,” he says.

“Comics are this visual language that combines images, symbols, composition… When you have characters conveying things about emotion, it’s more like the way humans naturally communicate face-to-face, with facial expressions, body language, hand gestures. It’s a really powerful medium of expression, especially when you combine this aspect of identity into it – you and your friends – it goes beyond just being a medium for expression and becomes a really powerful social mechanism as well.”

•The 50 best apps of 2013 Widcomm bluetooth software driver.

This article was edited on Friday 20 December to reflect the fact that Ontario is a province, not a state.

Bitstrips was a media and technology company based in Toronto, Canada. Founded in 2007 by Jacob Blackstock, David Kennedy, Shahan Panth, Dorian Baldwin, and Jesse Brown.^[1] the company's web application, Bitstrips.com, allowed users to create comic strips using personalized avatars, and preset templates and poses.^[2] Brown and Blackstock explained that the service was meant to enable self-expression without the need to have artistic skills. Bitstrips was first presented in 2008 at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and the service later piloted and launched a version designed for use as educational software. The service achieved increasing prominence following the launch of versions for Facebook and mobile platforms.

In 2014, Bitstrips launched a spin-off app known as Bitmoji, which allows users to create personalized stickers for use in messaging apps. In July 2016, Snapchat announced that it had acquired the company; the Bitstrips comic service was shut down, but Bitmoji remains operational, and has subsequently been given greater prominence within Snapchat's overall platform.

History[edit]

Bitstrips was co-developed by Toronto-based comic artist Jacob Blackstock and his high school friend, journalist Jesse Brown.^[3] The service was originally envisioned as a means to allow anyone to create their own comic strip without needing artistic skills. Brown explained that 'it's so difficult and time-consuming to tell a story in comic book form, drawing the same characters again and again in these tiny little panels, and just the amount of craftsmanship required. And even if you can do it well, which I never could, it takes years to make a story.'^[4] Brown stated that the service would be 'groundwork for a whole new way to communicate', and went as far as describing the service as being a 'YouTube for comics'.^[3] Blackstock explained that the concept of Bitstrips was influenced by his own use of comics as a form of socialization; a student, Blackstock and his friends drew comics featuring each other and shared them during classes. He felt that Bitstrips was a 'medium for self-expression', stating that 'It's not just about you making the comics, but since you and your friends star in these comics, it's like you're the medium. The visual nature of comics just speaks so much louder than text.'^[5]

The service was publicly unveiled at South by Southwest 2008.^[3] In 2009, the service introduced a version oriented towards the educational market, Bitstrips for Schools, which was initially piloted at a number of schools in Ontario. The service was praised by educators for being engaging to students, especially within language classes. Brown noted that students were using the service to create comics outside of class as well, stating that it was 'so gratifying and shocking what people do with your tool to make their own stories in ways that you never would have anticipated. Some of them are just brilliant.'^[4]

In December 2012, Bitstrips launched a version for Facebook;^[2] by July 2013, Bitstrips had 10 million unique users on Facebook, having created over 50 million comics.^[6] In October 2013, Bitstrips launched a mobile app; in two months, Bitstrips became a top-downloaded app in 40 countries, and over 30 million avatars had been created with it. In November 2013, Bitstrips secured a round of funding from Horizons Ventures and Li Ka-shing.^[7][5]

In October 2014, Bitstrips launched Bitmoji, a spin-off app that allows users to create stickers featuring Bitstrips characters in various templates.^[8][9]

In July 2016, following unconfirmed reports earlier in the year,^[10]Snapchat announced that it had acquired Bitstrips. The company's staff continue to operate out of Toronto, but the original Bitstrips comic service was shut down in favour of focusing exclusively on Bitmoji.^[11][12][13] Following the acquisition, Snapchat's app was updated to integrate with Bitmoji, allowing users to link their accounts between the two apps and add Bitmoji to their posts.^[11] In September 2017, animated, 3D rendered Bitmoji were introduced to Snapchat's augmented reality 'World Lenses' feature.^[14]

Since the Snap acquisition, Bitmoji has seen significant growth; in April 2017, it was reported that Bitmoji was the most-downloaded app on the iOS App Store in Australia, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.^[15] In December 2017, Apple stated that Bitmoji was the most-downloaded iOS app worldwide in 2017, followed in second place by Snapchat itself.^[16] The following month, Bitmoji released an update branded as 'Bitmoji Deluxe', which includes a wider array of customization options.^[17]

In June 2018, Snap launched its development platform Snap Kit, which includes the ability to offer access to Bitmoji stickers within third-party services with a Snapchat connection.^[18] In April 2019, Snap announced a new multiplayer mobile game within the Snapchat app known as Bitmoji Party, where players use their Bitmoji characters in-game. Later that month, Snap announced a new SDK for selected partners^[19][20]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Whatever Happened To Bitstrips

1. ^'Bitstrips'. Crunchbase.
2. ^ ^abMoss, Caroline. 'Here's How You Can Create Those Personalized Comic Strips That Are Popping Up All Over Facebook'. Business Insider. Retrieved 14 November 2013.
3. ^ ^abc'SXSW: Cartooning Made Easy with Bitstrips'. Wired. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
4. ^ ^abKorducki, Kelli. 'Kids Get Creative (and Hilarious) with Bitstrips for Schools'. Torontoist. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
5. ^ ^ab'Bitstrips dominating app charts as users create over 30M avatars'. Adweek. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
6. ^Koetsier, John. 'Bitstrips bootstraps social comics on Facebook to 10M users and 50M unique cartoons'. VentureBeat. Retrieved 14 November 2013.
7. ^Steger, Isabella; Lee, Yvonne. 'Bitstrips Gets High-Profile Backer'. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 14 November 2013.
8. ^'My Bitmoji, My Better Self'. The New York Times. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
9. ^'Bitstrips Launches Bitmoji Personalized Emoji App on iOS'. Adweek. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
10. ^'Exclusive: Snapchat Buys Bitmoji Maker'. Fortune. Retrieved 29 March 2016.
11. ^ ^ab'Snapchat builds Bitmojis into app, confirms acquisition of Toronto startup'. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
12. ^'Here's How You Can Use Bitmoji Inside Snapchat'. Fortune. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
13. ^'Why Snapchat bought Toronto-based Bitstrips for $100M'. CTV News. 28 March 2016. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
14. ^'Snapchat's Bitmoji avatars are now three-dimensional and animated'. The Verge. Retrieved 2017-12-10.
15. ^'Snapchat's Bitmoji is the No. 1 most-downloaded app in five top markets'. Recode. Retrieved 2017-12-10.
16. ^'Bitmoji and Drake top Apple's best of 2017 list'. CNET. Retrieved 2017-12-10.
17. ^Ong, Thuy (2018-01-30). 'Snapchat takes Bitmoji deluxe with hundreds of new customization options'. The Verge. Retrieved 2019-07-14.
18. ^'Snapchat launches privacy-safe Snap Kit, the un-Facebook platform'. TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-04-25.
19. ^Newton, Casey (2019-04-04). 'Bitmoji Party is Snap's first original game for Snapchat'. The Verge. Retrieved 2019-04-25.
20. ^'Snapchat will let you play as your Bitmoji in video games'. TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-04-25.

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