China's selfie king had a plan to make money by selling makeup... but it didn't work
Meitu shutting down shopping app that was supposed to use filters
Forget slapping filters on selfies or reshaping your face. Chinese selfie giant Meitu had a plan: Analyze photos to work out someone’s skin condition, and then sell products for that type of skin.
Genius, right? Er, maybe not. Meitu is shutting down that app at the end of this month.
Meitu, China’s selfie king
Meitu didn’t explain how exactly the app didn’t work out, but said in the internal letter that Meitu’s will shift its business model back to “the nature of mobile internet”.
We didn’t know what that meant either, so we asked -- but Meitu hasn’t responded to our request to elaborate on that.
Update, November 16, 2018: Meitu says,"'Back to the essence of mobile internet' has two layers of meaning. Firstly, it refers to Meitu’s strategic focus on its platform businesses. It also refers to our focus on scaling our user base and increasing our gross margin."