Face-Stagram

Yes, that's right, according to rumours will be the new hip place where all the cool kids hang out on t'internet - Face-Stagram! Okay, okay so I lied but it's just over a week now since the announcement about Facebook buying Instagram was made and I'm glad the dust has settled.

my home screen: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Camera+ All the my fave apps

It was inevitable that someone was going to buy Instagram. We live in a more visual world than ever before and images are everywhere. Instagram made it easier to share lovely pictures with people across the globe. Adding one of their filters means that even the most kak-handed of us (not me btw!) can post decent enough looking pictures. Our brains process pictures in a different way than words. A famous example is the TV debates between Nixon and Kennedy. Radio debates showed Nixon in the lead, but when they hit TV Kennedy was an outright leader in the polls. He was a master at the little facial expressions, and I think he even wore make up! So you see people judge on site first and foremost and so pictures are real popular.

I've been an avid Instagram user since the week it went public back in October 2010. At the time I only followed a few people I knew on there but slowly over the 2 short years I've built up quite a good little visual playground for myself in the form of my Instagram feed. It's sitting at 205 just now, deliberately much less than Twitter. For you see I don't want to be bombarded with every Tom, Dick or Jason's silly pictures. I've collated a number of cool people and brands from a range of backgrounds and locations across the globe. Aside from Twitter, it's the first place i check each morning when I wake. I like to see what's gone on around the world via the varying images from numerous time-zones. I like to see the photos that have been captured lovingly or on the hoof. Maybe it's my natural nosiness inside.

Anyway, back to the deal. A Billion Dollars. $1Billion. Let's not think about that too much. After all it's not a truck full of cash delivered to the Instagram team is it. There'll be shares and the like. Maybe? But why did Mark Zuckerberg, seemingly on a whim, buy Instagram for that much money? Probably not data, let's Face it they have pretty much cornered the market with that one. Mobile Photography is more like it. Rumour has it (not sure where I got that from) that the deal was done in two days! Zuck to Kev: I wanna buy Instagram, how much will it cost? Kev to Zuck: Errrrr...(leans back in chair and plucks a number out of thin air) A billion?.... (laughs like a child who's just swore for the first time) Zuck to Kev: Okay then! Where do we sign?. Kev: (falls off chair, rolls over, does the dance - you know the one, scrambles back onto the chair, clears his throat) Deal!
And so the deal was done. I'd like to think that's how it went down. In my mind it happened like that. *winky eye face*

Everyone's gone mobile #SadDigitalCamera  ~ Taken on Instagram

So, why did he buy? Mobile! Mobile photography. Mobile. Much has been said about the rubbishness of the Facebook mobile apps and that the photo interface has, until recently, been pretty bland. But now, look what they have. Potential new Facebookers? (we'll come back to this later). I don't know about you but i certainly do hit share to Facebook on some Instagram photos. It even puts them into an Instagram album automagically. I mostly use this method because they're fab pictures of my nephews and my family only follow me on Facebook, especially ones who stay far away. So I like to share those moments I've captured on Facebook too. But it's easy now to with a smart phone and a decent app, enter Instagram.

Some people got a bit hysterical when the deal was announced. "I'm leaving Instagram" was the cry. Well I'm not. Some people were posting links to new photo apps, but the beauty of Instagram for me is the simplicity, the ease of use, the fact that you can follow people and they can follow you, you can share to most social networks (well that ones that everyone's uses lets face it), the filters are pretty (who remembers the astro filter?!) and it was the original. And I like that. It's not always about the next new thing, it's about the original.

One thing I didn't like was a i read a tweet from someone who claimed that 'creatives' like them would all leave and a certain faction would be left. Hmmm... Just because I don't work in the creative industry does not mean i am not creative. It was a silly tweet from someone who has posted no more than twenty photos, if you're lucky! Grrr. Sometimes the downright snobbery in social networks gets right on my nerves. There's a lot of it around.(another post maybe).

mobile photography

I'll end by saying Congrats to the small but perfectly formed Instagram team! I hope that the statements from both Instagram and Facebook are upheld and they don't tinker about with it too much. Perhaps a few extra filters? Perhaps a better Facebook mobile service? who knows. But just like Darcy told Jones in the movie... I like it just the way it is.

ooh! Before I go perhaps you might want to have a watch of this video I found about 6 weeks ago. It's Kevin Rose interviewing Kevin Systrom (co-founder of Instagram). Interesting, inspiring and well worth a watch. Love his thinking behind Instagram - hits thoughts about the early days, focusing on photos only, with XProII being the first filter. Turns out that was a great move!

Angela x

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