A privacy first photo network can still feel social, with Darin Myman, Myseum.ai

Your camera roll is overflowing, your group chats are chaos, and the biggest platforms keep getting weirder about data, ads, and AI. So what would a modern photo sharing app look like if it started with privacy and still felt genuinely social? Gary Pageau from The Dead Pixels Society sits down with Darin Myman, CEO of Myseum.ai, to unpack Picture Party, a new approach to event photo sharing that’s closer to a private social network than a simple shared album.

Myman discusses the real differences: A feed where people can post big batches of photos and videos, add context with captions and tags, and react and comment like the early days of social networking. He explains why Picture Party is built so new members can see everything from the beginning, making it useful not only for weddings and parties, but also for long-term family photo archives that can last for decades and be shared across generations.

Privacy is the center of the conversation. Myman talks about the concern that personal images get used for AI training on major platforms, and he outlines a privacy first AI direction that aims to deliver features like automatic tagging and auto album creation without exposing your data or letting it feed giant external models. Also covered are the practical controls that matter in the real world: who can invite others, who can download full size images for printing, view only modes, and moderator tools that can remove content, boot users, or approve posts before they go live. 

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Gary Pageau 0:00

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau, and today we're joined by Darren, my man, who is the CEO of Myseum.ai, whose lead p product is Picture a Party. Hi, Darren. How are you today?

Darin Myman 0:16

I'm doing great, Gary. Thank you for having us, and I'm really excited to tell you about everything we're working on.

Gary Pageau 0:23

So you're relatively new in this space. You kinda came onto my radar about six to eight months ago with some public announcements and all that, but you've been around for a while actually as a company.

From DatChat To Myseum Origins

Gary Pageau 0:35

Can you talk a little bit about kinda your background and how you got into this space?

Darin Myman 0:41

So we started the company about 12 years ago. It started out as DatChat, and we were focused on, privacy-based messaging- Where everything's encrypted, where you're in control, and we innovated things like screenshot protection.

Gary Pageau 0:55

Right.

Darin Myman 0:55

Meaning, not that it just tells you someone takes a screenshot, but it actually prevents the screenshot, and if someone does, it comes in blank, it self-destructs it, and then it tells everyone exactly what you're doing.

Gary Pageau 1:08

Right.

Darin Myman 1:09

So along the way, we became a public company, DatChat went public, and we started really looking at what's the biggest need in the marketplace now, and what are the problems that we were finding in this world? And what I found is I have all these pictures on my phone, and there's all these pictures in shoe boxes and albums in my house.

Gary Pageau 1:29

Right.

Darin Myman 1:30

There's really no way to share them, and how do I share them with the future?

Gary Pageau 1:34

Right.

Darin Myman 1:35

So we changed the name to Myseum. And we realized that we needed to build something that was like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon social network with privacy.

Gary Pageau 1:46

Okay.

Darin Myman 1:47

And what that means is if we come together and create a social network, and I put up all my pictures, I connect to my kids. How do their kids get in, and their kids? How do we-

Gary Pageau 1:57

And Kevin Bacon, eventually

Darin Myman 1:59

yeah. So it just connected people forever and ever. And what's interesting is it was probably about a year and a half ago, I was at, a photo managers conference- where we were debuting Myseum- everything was private and encrypted, but it grew through the ages by, it

Picture Party Explained Beyond Shared Albums

Darin Myman 2:15

was the unlimited tier social network. And we said, "We're working also on private groups." And all of a sudden, everyone I talked to said when are they gonna be ready? When are you gonna have the private groups? I'd love to be able to just bring who I want together." And this was on our technology roadmap, but all of a sudden it got moved to the front of the line- To allow anyone in 30 seconds, 60 seconds, to create their own private network. Okay. Where whether it's two people, it could be 10,000 people, and keeping your social life separate, but private and encrypted. And that's how they wanted to pass along their pictures. I have a well, we created a, called a Picture Party. Although it started off as a pop-up gala, which wasn't as fun.

Gary Pageau 2:59

Yeah.

Darin Myman 2:59

So we were able to get the Picture Party URL, and we do this for iOS and Android. We're doing the web version now. But essentially what it is instant private social networking. We have a patent on this that allows you to say, "I want a Picture Party for two minutes," or, "I want a Picture Party forever." And invite a limited number of people, and it's easy to connect through QR codes or- links or within the app. And it's giving that whole social experience. It's not just one pic. So this is what everyone says to me, right? Why is it different than, a shared album?" First, if, a shared album is just a group of photos that's like your camera roll, this is a full-blown social network where people could put 200 pictures in a post, write about it, tag things, describe each picture. People can like and react. So it's a social feed, while at the same time it's helping you, document whatever event you're at, whether it's an event, a party. And the other thing I always get, just, put it out there. People go WhatsApp. I could create a group and share all these photos or iMessage" or whatever it might be.

Gary Pageau 4:07

Yeah.

Darin Myman 4:08

But with those, you don't see anything that happened before you joined, and it's not a social network.

Gary Pageau 4:14

Right.

Darin Myman 4:14

So this allows you to see everything from the beginning. So my great-great-great-grandchildren, which I hope join the Picture Party I started this year for my family, they'll be able to see everything back to the inception, going back to what we considered the myseum, your personal collection- storage, and allow people in your family to correct, collect. And the other part of it is unlike, the Facebooks and the Instagrams, what you upload is what people could download if you allow them, 'cause we built all these privacy controls in.

Gary Pageau 4:46

Right.

Darin Myman 4:47

So if the creator of the Picture Party says you could download, you're getting a full-sized picture, which is great for printing and collecting and- all sorts of things that people want their imagery for. So- We're actually redefining social networking.

Privacy First AI Without Data Harvesting

Gary Pageau 5:02

So a little bit about that, the privacy piece. One of the other concerns that people have with the Facebook and the Google and all those is, of course, the AI training piece, that your p- pictures are basically used to train AI and other things. Are you doing anything like that with your- No,

Darin Myman 5:19

you can't.

Gary Pageau 5:20

You can't. Okay,

Darin Myman 5:20

you can't. So what we have developed, and it should be out... I don't wanna give a timeframe yet. But we're developing privacy first AI, so you don't have to give up all those AI tools, like auto album creation or automatic tagging- that is learning just from you and keeping that information that we don't even see it. The learning, the large language model, is really a small language model-

Gary Pageau 5:42

And

Darin Myman 5:43

training from you, and it's shared with nobody.

Gary Pageau 5:46

Right.

Darin Myman 5:47

But at the same time, you get all the benefits of turning a picture into a video, or, you want a album of all your kids scoring goals in soccer games- which may be, like, three pictures. But- Yeah, it allows you to do these things, without giving up your privacy, which, let's face it, on these other social networks, there is none.

Gary Pageau 6:07

And that's kinda where I was getting to, is, you're opting into basically AI oversight of your images, whether you know it or not. It's being trained on you, right? And some people don't mind it. Some people are very concerned about that. And so let's talk about your go-to-market strategy for this. Is there a free tier? Is there a paid tier? If I sign up for, a Myseum or a Picture Party account for my family, can I buy a lifetime membership? What's the model there?

Business Model Moderation And Better Ads

Darin Myman 6:40

We have a very different model, especially for the, photo sharing industry. So to create a picture party and join a picture party, and right now we offer 50 gigs of free storage. That's going to 250 gigs in the very near future.

Gary Pageau 6:55

Okay.

Darin Myman 6:56

And the way we're going to make money is, if you're gonna use us for a wedding, you're gonna want a moderator, or if you're a business wanting to use a picture party for, St. Patrick's Day, you need someone looking at those pictures beforehand- before they go up. So we charge for moderation, to appoint a moderator is $10. We're also building a central feed- that's private and secure just for you. So if, let's say you're in 20 different picture parties, they'll feed in there and tastefully, unlike some of the other social networks out there- there'll be ads that aren't obsessive and that inundating your feed where you see one picture, one ad, one picture, one ad.

Gary Pageau 7:33

Right.

Darin Myman 7:34

And but also the most important part of this is bringing people back together. Facebook started, it started out as a social network, now they're Meta. Yeah. Now they're just a social media company where it's a little bit creepy. I look at one, dog dancing video. Next thing I'm seeing 150 of them.

Gary Pageau 7:52

And you're seeing ads for dog food.

Darin Myman 7:55

Oh, it's ridiculous. And if I look at a pair of jeans, and this really happened to me, I'm not gonna say the brand. There were 200 ads within the week- for that same pair of jeans. Sometimes I'd see 15 in a row. One video, one ad, one- video, one ad.

Gary Pageau 8:10

Yeah.

Darin Myman 8:11

So They've

Gary Pageau 8:11

What's even creepier is you may just have the Facebook app on your phone and you may be just talking to your spouse about something and you're not even scrolling, and all of a sudden you see ads for it. And, they say they don't do that, but I'm sure- I know they're doing it.

Darin Myman 8:26

They say... They... So if you look at it, the social networks have gone to the creep factor. First of all, the algorithms are creepy, but they're not even that good. If I look at one thing, doesn't mean I want to see 1,000 of them, exactly. Try and build an algorithm that learns from you. So what we've done is taken all that away because I think people wanna connect.

Gary Pageau 8:47

Sure.

Darin Myman 8:47

My

Gary Pageau 8:47

best friend- and that's why people got into Facebook, right? But w- what you're seeing now with, other platforms, whether it's Facebook or whatever platforms, is they're so ad-driven and- monetize the user-driven because they kinda have to be 'cause they have so much overhead, that they're losing sight of why people joined in the first place, which is why you're getting people, of all ages now who are like, "Oh, yeah, I never put anything on Facebook," or, "I don't even open it up," or, "I've moved to TikTok or Instagram or whatever." They've lost their place as the home for your social network, if you will, i- Yeah because i- they became so intrusive.

Darin Myman 9:28

Yeah. I- if you take a look

Why Big Social Feels Creepy Now

Darin Myman 9:30

specifically at Facebook, you don't see your friends anymore. You come in, they're suggesting a lot of people that you have no idea who they are. They want you to join all these groups, and once in a while, if their algorithm picks it up- Now, there's ways to find them. And that's what creates the opportunity for Picture Party- for us to get big very quick. Because if you have a party, you invite people, it's naturally viral in the first place.

Gary Pageau 9:51

Right.

Darin Myman 9:53

But even on Facebook, you don't wanna be connected to everybody. You want different groups. And what- Picture Party is call it for better or worse, like a mini social network or a large social network for work, home, people you travel with. Some of my best friends I met in Facebook groups when we were going on a cruise together beforehand. We met online, and we stayed in touch.

Gary Pageau 10:16

Right.

Darin Myman 10:16

But that's all lost now on Facebook. So where does Picture Party come and says, "Okay, we have AI. We have all these privacy concerns. We certainly don't want them using our pictures to one day use our images to sell things to our friends and family."

Gary Pageau 10:31

100%. Yeah, 'cause they're gonna say, Darren likes these jeans. You will too."

Darin Myman 10:37

A- and there's gonna be someone that looks not me, but like me.

Gary Pageau 10:41

Yeah, 'cause I think the social- Right selling piece is gonna get to that point where they say, people like you bought this." And I think people will opt into that, 'cause everyone w- 'cause a, there's a good portion- Yeah of the people who wanna be influencers, right? And they don't mind having their shopping habits exposed if they're somehow either compensated or they get a-

Darin Myman 11:23

Right

Gary Pageau 11:23

referral link or whatever. So that's, I think that's definitely coming, where, if I buy something through a link on Facebook and I've opted in, then they're gonna say, "Everybody in his network, hey, he bought this." "You should too."

Darin Myman 11:36

Who knows? They'll create AI videos of us using

Gary Pageau 11:38

that product- Oh, yeah

Darin Myman 11:39

too.

Gary Pageau 11:40

Yeah, no one wants to see an AI video of me modeling jeans, that's for sure.

Darin Myman 11:44

Me either.

Gary Pageau 11:47

So-

Darin Myman 11:47

It's gone from super cool to super creepy-

Gary Pageau 11:50

Yeah

Darin Myman 11:50

on the social networks.

Gary Pageau 11:52

Yeah.

Darin Myman 11:52

And it, I think people want a private place where they can do the same- fun things that they originally- started going with Facebook for, right? Yeah. It was fun. It was entertaining. You like to make fun of people putting up every meal that they ate, and every hamburger or every- trip on the plane. But people also miss that because those are their people. Those are my people that I'm with. And if it's- i'll tell you what, you go to a wedding, right?

Gary Pageau 12:18

Right.

Darin Myman 12:19

One thing that PictureParty does, it turns everyone into your photographer. We're always gonna need wedding photographers, they get all the important moments. But what about all the fun stuff from traveling to the wedding, and the bars, and the dance floor?

Gary Pageau 12:31

Right.

Darin Myman 12:31

Now you can have, if there's 200 people at your wedding, 200 people could be instantly connected-

Weddings And Events Everyone Contributes

Darin Myman 12:36

and sharing those with you, things you'd never see.

Gary Pageau 12:40

Right.

Darin Myman 12:40

And that's my biggest gripe with, while we have a digital camera on our phone, we have more pictures than ever before- But we actually share less.

Gary Pageau 12:48

What I find interesting, there have been a few products that have already been out there for a while, like camera, event-specific cameras. Hipstamatic I think has their version, and pe- there's other people who have done it, and they basically, it's an invite-only picture album. But I think the difference between what y- the PictureParty offering is and something like that is, y- there's more opportunities for content. There's more beyond just pictures. Is that what I'm understanding?

Darin Myman 13:15

It's social. Yeah, we have pictures and videos, but we have messages. But you have reactions and comments, and that the things that we all loved about Facebook in the beginning- Are all in PictureParty. All those fun things. So it makes it not just y- I'm gonna go look at a gallery of pictures, or are you just gonna flip through them? That's not fun. Yeah. But if you see what's happening and what's going on, and you may be seeing things that you didn't see coming together- And it's happening in real time, and it could continue. Just because the party ends, it keeps going on because you've now connected to people, especially with families. If you think, next time you go to a family gathering, there's always the picture takers.

Gary Pageau 13:55

Right.

Darin Myman 13:56

It's hard to see those pictures sometimes.

Gary Pageau 13:57

Yeah. That's one of the challenges that you have. I was just at a family event over the weekend, there was a graduation party for someone, and people were, like texting images back and forth. And it'd just- Yeah be nice just to see them all, right? Just-

Darin Myman 14:08

And if you think of the, a PictureParty, right? Think of a movie premiere or a new show. You can have watch parties where people are, like showing what they're doing. It allows people that don't know each other to come together, but you're not connected in anything except that party and that group.

Gary Pageau 14:25

Right.

Darin Myman 14:25

And I think that's the important part.

Gary Pageau 14:27

Can you talk a little bit about that function the moderator? Is that like a super user? Can they, like boot people out if they're misbehaving? Or can they invite people in? What does a moderator do?

Darin Myman 14:39

So the first moderator is the creator of the party. But if you need people to help, you could appoint, 20 of them. So they have two choices: just to watch the feed- Right and boot people out and delete things, or preview things. So if you're doing a Taylor Swift concert, let's say, and you got you're gonna have some things that shouldn't be going up there that will get queued and reviewed. We're actually developing privacy first AI to review those pictures as they come up too- Okay but they still need a human eye on them, 'cause you want it to control the flow of information in the group

Moderator Tools Downloads And Geofencing

Darin Myman 15:11

you created. You don't want anyone to be upset.

Gary Pageau 15:14

So the moderator can approve or disapprove or boot, dis- get And d- now, how granular are those settings? So let's say, for example, I was Let's say I went to a concert, and there was a picture party from the artist, and they created a picture party for the event. Can they just say if anyone within a certain geographic location during a time or, let's say they were at the venue and they could opt in. Is something like that possible?

Darin Myman 15:39

So the first rules are that you get to answer the questions, who could share the party? Yeah. 'Cause if I invite all We're adding the geo-fencing. Yeah. That's, the one- Yeah,

Gary Pageau 15:48

I think that's gonna be key, I think

Darin Myman 15:50

yeah. But also, who could download? So okay, everyone could post, but no one could download.

Gary Pageau 15:56

Right.

Darin Myman 15:56

That's a big thing, too.

Gary Pageau 15:58

Yeah.

Darin Myman 15:58

Or this is just view only, it's only the artist posting.

Gary Pageau 16:02

Yeah.

Darin Myman 16:02

And they could view that. So we've built all those so you have control. Then we're adding some cool stuff, too, that's coming- from our DadChat days. Self-destructing messages, screenshot protection if you want something kind of- Yeah,

Gary Pageau 16:14

I think the screenshot protection's gonna be key, I think. 'Cause that's a huge challenge right now, especially with photographers, for example. Let's say, for example, you have a photographer who, maybe there's a picture party of a wedding, and they post the proofs in there, and they're copyrighted, right? People are using AI to remove copyright notices, right? And so there's some In that world, there's a lot of screenshot protection going on. So I think it would be great to see that in the Picture Party product.

Darin Myman 16:42

Yeah. Th- that we're just moving over from DadChat. We've already developed that technology. Yeah. And we have, I think, 21 patents now- including our most valuable, which is Picture Party. And I just wanna make this clear, too, that a Picture Party isn't like one picture. One post could have, I think we have We're gonna move it to 100, but we, yeah, put 200 pictures and videos in a post. And then with our privacy first AI, we're gonna- bring in kind of the photo management where, okay, I wanna see, the videos, just the shots of my kid kicking a goal, which for my kids- it would've been many. So you could pull out any event, or you could curate, a, an album to, to send off to be printed or whatever it might be.

Gary Pageau 17:22

Are you gonna have printing within the app? I think that would be an opportunity for an idea where, let's say you wanna create a photo book from an event. Rather than doing download

Printing Roadmap And Screenshot Protection

Gary Pageau 17:32

and a re-upload, which is gonna create massive amount of friction that'll never get done, you could have, a builder inside.

Darin Myman 17:39

Yeah. High priority for us. It's gonna be sooner than later.

Gary Pageau 17:42

Okay. I

Darin Myman 17:42

think I'm excited about it.

Gary Pageau 17:44

'Cause I think that's one of the challenges, I think, with a lot of things. Again, with the moderator controls, they can say, "Hey, don't allow this to be printed," right? 'Cause that is one of the things, is somebody does post a picture and they say, "Don't allow this to be printed," it would have to respect that.

Darin Myman 17:58

So built into every picture party now is, can someone download or save this photo? The answer is yes or no. Now, if it's a family, it's yes. If it's, a photographer, obviously it's no. And then it can have the screenshot protection, which is coming very soon too. That's in our wheelhouse.

Gary Pageau 18:13

Yeah

Darin Myman 18:14

we've built that, and it's cool. And funny thing is we got, like, why did the picture disappear? Why did my screenshot come out blank?

Gary Pageau 18:21

Yeah.

Darin Myman 18:21

Why did I get reported to the group,

Gary Pageau 18:24

so how are you building your customer base from this, the clients from this, right? 'Cause, you're not the size of a Facebook yet or something like that. So how are you getting, how are you reaching out to people? 'Cause, that's a challenge these days,

Growth Plan Sports Weddings Fundraisers

Gary Pageau 18:36

is getting users to try things. Even to download an app is very challenging.

Darin Myman 18:41

So we're doing a couple things. One, we're, approaching youth sports. We just brought someone on that's big in that industry. Weddings. But also, we're gonna allow people to use it as a fundraiser through our affiliate program. So think of this. You're bringing a great new private social network technology to, I don't know your dog rescue. Now, people can get paid every time someone joins a Picture Party, so we get an engaged user, and they get money by giving something away for free with nothing to sell, nothing to buy. You're not asking anything of the person that wants to support that group. So we gladly pay, tens of thousands of dollars if you have, tens of thousands of users.

Gary Pageau 19:20

Right.

Darin Myman 19:20

And we just started that. We're seeing some good success, and traction's starting to take hold. But if you think of it, for us to go spend money on Facebook would be ridiculous.

Gary Pageau 19:32

That's not, those aren't your people. 'Cause, 'cause your people have already left Facebook.

Darin Myman 19:36

But we also think when we get to that first million, two million users, what happens when you start a Picture Party? You've got to invite people. So it's got that natural virality, and I think people are ready to break up with Facebook now- and Instagram, and say, "Okay I want my friends back. I want my privacy back." Yeah, I'll still go there. I'm not saying walk away permanently.

Gary Pageau 20:00

Yeah.

Darin Myman 20:01

But I don't need all, the creepy dog bungee movies. If I watch one dog bungee jumping or dancing and I get inundated with it, I think people just want to be able to keep their life separate, especially in the age of AI.

Gary Pageau 20:15

Right.

Darin Myman 20:15

All of a sudden, privacy is very important.

Gary Pageau 20:18

Yeah, 'cause that's one of the things we're seeing, like on my end, with a lot of the people who are, even getting a little back involved with analog photography and things like that because they want that authenticity. It's a reaction or a response to AI-driven

Long Term Memories And Closing Links

Gary Pageau 20:33

content. It's I don't need to see that stuff. It's fine, it's entertaining, it's amusing, but it's not important. And what you're really, I think, emphasizing is the important reasons why people capture memories.

Darin Myman 20:49

I think that this focus on privacy and control, but also quality, we're doing unlike, Facebook full-sized photos going up- and you can download if it's allowed, is bringing back the way we used to share pictures, right? We used to go to a party, everyone had their stack of pictures and you pass them around.

Gary Pageau 21:06

Right.

Darin Myman 21:06

It was easy. Everyone went through them and it was cool. Yeah here's my trip to Aruba. And with the analog photography, I think we're bringing a lot of those at- attributes- into the digital age. And taking the best of the digital age, but remembering that we're people and that we're the really the most important part of this whole thing. It's our memories, it's our, ideas in some case, and it's a it's our livelihood, you know- to be able to share and pass on our information intergenerationally- as well as now make it easier to share. We're focused a lot on now, but we expect these picture parties to last for decades.

Gary Pageau 21:47

Yeah, 'cause you're not a, fly-by-night startup by any means. You've been around for a while, so you have a base of building a company that you hope, will be around for a while.

Darin Myman 21:55

We have put tens of millions into this, and we see ourselves as a major player eventually in the social media, social networking space. So we're in it to win it and grow. The technology's built. We're adding, new, we have a great product as it stands, and now all the cool stuff is coming in- Like the auto, album creation and printing and things like that. So our goal is just to keep it growing. We've been around for 12 years. We think we're gonna be around as a name, household name. And I think going from the original name of Picture Party, which was PopUp Gala and Myseum, to it's a Picture Party-

Gary Pageau 22:35

Yeah

Darin Myman 22:35

is very memorable.

Gary Pageau 22:36

So where can people go for more information about Myseum, Picture Party, and all this fun stuff? How can they g- lo- you know, check it out and get more involved?

Darin Myman 22:46

Oh, start out by go to pictureparty.com. We have some videos. We have links to the app stores. You could download it for iOS and Android today and start using it. Start one Picture Party, start 100 Picture Parties. It's up to you. And check- And

Gary Pageau 23:01

you said there's a web version coming.

Darin Myman 23:03

There's a web version coming that's in the works.

Gary Pageau 23:06

And we'll get to see you live and in person at Visual First this fall. Can you give us a preview of what you're gonna be talking about there?

Darin Myman 23:13

Oh, we're gonna be talking about social networking and privacy and really sharing the ideas we have and hearing the ideas. Look, a lot of this was born from the industry. The industry told us to, "Hey, yeah, your six degrees of Kevin Bacon social network's great, but we love the Picture Party idea." Being able to just come together instantly, and I think we'll be talking a little bit about that because we fit with everybody.

Gary Pageau 23:40

Great. Looking forward to meeting you in person in San Francisco at Visual First, and great having you on. And best wishes on fu- for future success.

Darin Myman 23:50

Great talking to you today, and thank you so much. Bye.