About

Face Swap Live is a mobile application that superimposes a variety of celebrity faces over the user's face in real time. Videos and GIFs of people using the application are often posted to YouTube and Reddit.

History

On December 16th, 2015, developing house Laan Labs launched the app Face Swap Live for iPhone, which allowed people to swap faces instantly in video, and to use a photo library to swap faces with celebrities.^[2] On January 13th, 2013, The Washington Post^[3] posted an article about Face Swap Live, referring to it as the "app that launched a thousand memes."

Online Presence

On YouTube

On January 27th, 2016, YouTuber PewDiePie posted a video of himself using the application (shown below, left). The same day, Jenna Marbles posted a similar video (shown below, right). Within two months, the videos gained over 3.4 million and 2.5 million views respectively.

On February 1st, YouTuber Miranda Sings posted a video in which she uses the app to face swap with other YouTubers (shown below, left). On February 6th, YouTuber Markiplier posted a video in which he FaceSwaps with YouTuber JackSepticEye (shown below, right). Within six weeks, the videos garnered upwards of 1.7 million and 2.2 million views respectively.

On Reddit

On December 29th, 2015, Redditor NiGoL1 submitted an animated GIF of a man using the app while holding a baby (shown below). In two months, the post gained over 5,800 votes (91% upvoted) and 320 comments on the /r/gifs^[1] subreddit.