The app, developed by Belarusians Yevgeny Nevgen, Sergey Gonchar and Yevgeny Zatepyakin, remains free of charge, but is now functioning as part of the social network, to be integrated into Facebook. On the website of his company, Yevgeny Nevgen has noted that the team has been working hard to make the application exciting, using filters to change appearances. “We’re now pleased to join efforts with Facebook, bringing this technology to even greater numbers of people — almost 1.6bn.”
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the world’s most famous social network, personally congratulated the Belarusians in a small video, having ‘tried on’ one of the app’s masks.
Interestingly, ‘Masquerade’ was launched only at the end of last year, but quickly attracted the attention of the Bloomberg Agency. Moreover, on the eve of the Oscars, popular American comic and TV host Jimmy Kimmel advertised the app on his show, ‘trying on’ the masks of famous people, including Leonardo DiCaprio. The app then leapt to third most downloaded in the American App Store and ranked first in in the ‘Photo’ and ‘Video’ categories.
By Pavel Martyshenko
