Thursday, December 23, 2010

Instagram Magic


Instagram has taken off like anything. There is an artist inside all of us, and Instagram is quickie art work. You give that little tinge to a snap shot, and make it your own. Many many flavors are possible. There is more to come. Instagram has taken a lead of sorts.

There is this feeling that you have managed to capture the moment. Your blog needs a template, your moment needs an Instagram. The final letter might be the key word in the name. M, like in moment.

There is capturing, and then there is sharing. I wish you were here. Let me share this moment with you. We are trying hard to make the world a small place. We are trying hard to never have to leave.

Instagram has been an instant hit. There is capturing, there is sharing. But Instagram rides your existing social graphs. You share on Twitter, you share on Faceebook. That has been the reason for its rapid rise.

FoodSpotting is at half a million downloads in a year, Instagram is at a million downloads in less than three months. Granted they occupy different fragments of the same space, like Path and PicPlz. But FoodSpotting has the option to carve out a new social graph that these other services do not. Imagine a social graph that only consists of people you ever ate with. Instagram will not have that. Path will not have that. That might give FoodSpotting an opening.

These are the next after FourSquare companies, but there is room for a few different ones. It is not like only one will survive. And FourSquare has been smart in integrating with them all. That ecosystem concept is a win win. Instead of buy or bury, integrate them.

That makes for a lot of growth and monetization room for all players concerned.

It is not a Kodak moment, it is an Instagram moment. The moment is defined by a smartphone app, not a piece of hardware, not the camera. Times, they are a changing.

What's next? I don't know what's next. Except the obvious. Picture is a fulfilling but the simplest, dumbest of the various mindfood forms. What about an Instagram for music, for movies, for books/blog posts? That would be like taking social search to a whole new level, a level not even attempted by Facebook.
ReadWriteWeb: Against All the Odds: Instagram Gets 1 Million Users in 10 Weeks: it took Foursquare a year to hit 1 million users and Twitter, two years..... The Instagram website is terrible. ...... The company doesn't own instagram.com ....... They take one of the best mobile phone cameras on the market and they muddy up its photos. ..... There are loads of mobile photo filter thingy apps already. ..... Instagram's investors decided to back one of its competitors. ..... A competitor was named the iPhone app of the year by Apple.
But Instagram is not a successor company to FourSquare. It is a sibling company, a junior sibling late in coming. A check in is a lazy person's tweet. I am not literate, so I am not going to send you a tweet, instead I am going to check in. Similarly, instead of sending out a tweet - and there are people who think 140 characters are short - I am sending you a telegram, I mean an Instagram.
Instagram Blog: : The Instagram Community - One Million and Counting: Within a few minutes, they started pouring in. People from places like Japan, France, New York, started signing up in droves. The night of sleep we were hoping for turned into a few meager hours before we rushed into the office to add capacity to the service.
Instagram is checking in into the moment. FourSquare is about checking in into an establishment. And so the next FourSquare title I gave to FoodSpotting still rests with FoodSpotting. It is in the what after you check in space.
TechCrunch: Instagram Captures A Million Users. Up Next: API, Android, And Funding: and moved into a proper office — appropriately enough, Twitter’s original office. ..... Twitter now includes their photos in the right-side pane, and they were a launch partner for Foursquare photos. ....... Our goal is to remain mobile focused for production, but create an engaging browse/consumption experience on the web ..... every day sets a new high water mark in terms of traffic from Twitter .... if you do the right thing for users, it will benefit you in the end ..... Benchmark Capital may be closing in on a round with the company. .... expect funding, an API, a revamped website, and an Android app, in that order.
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2 comments:

Amy Cao (Foodspotting) said...

Thanks for sharing your thoughtful post with us, Paramendra! We are fans of Instagram too :)

Paramendra Kumar Bhagat said...

Hi Amy. Thanks for dropping by my blog. I am honored you did.

Saw your Happy Holidays video. I think you had a little something to do with its creation. Great work. The small, nimble startup vibe comes through.

I have several posts at this blog about FoodSpotting. Just do a search on the name in the top left corner.

Enjoy.