The smartphones are becoming our go-to devices for everything, especially snapping a photo.
Combine those snapshots with social media and you have an instant, online community of photographers.
One of the fastest growing communities is Instagram. A cool little free app, found at the Apple App Store for iPhone, iPod and iPad, it lets you snap a photo, or select one from your library, apply a retro-looking effect and then share the resulting insta-artwork with the rest of the Instagram community.
"IPhoneography," as it has been dubbed, is huge, probably due to the fact the iPhone 4 is now the top-selling camera in the United States.
Checking out the Instagram community this week, I have to say I was amazed. The latest version of the iPhone boasts a five-megapixel camera and even though it has a tiny lens, it produces some impressive results.
Run those photos through any number of photo processing apps, which add effects that would take hours on the computer, and you have a massively addictive pastime for the photography nut.
Instagram now has five million users. That’s 625,000 users for every month they’ve been in existence — with the growth accelerating. Just this past weekend they added 100,000 new users, for example. Even more amazing, there are now 1.25 million users for every one employee of Instagram.
As for the burgeoning Instagram ecosystem, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom says that there are now 2,500 unique apps out there accessing their APIs. Remarkably, they are also seeing some 350,000 connections across their API, meaning that some of the apps connected are massively popular. Which are the most popular? Webstagram and Flipboard were the top two the last time he looked, Systrom says. There are also now applications pushing photos into Instagram — not through the API, but through more creative means.
One of the most remarkable things about Instagram is that they’ve achieved such success while only being on one platform: iOS. There is no way to sign up on the web. No way to sign up on Android. They’re currently a mainstay in the top social networking apps list in the App Store. And that’s big because they’re not spending anything on marketing, and Apple has only promoted them a few times. In other words, the growth and traction has been largely organic.
He also says that they have a lot more work to do on the current iPhone app. “Lots of very cool new stuff coming soon,” is all he’ll vaguely say. He also said that there will be some “fundamental shifts in the underlying technology,” coming soon.
“We want to give people the tools to tell the story of their lives in a visual way — we’re working hard on making those tools top-notch,” Systrom says.
Giving their size and the rate at which they’re growing, Instagram clearly has a lot of competitors gunning for them. So far, most have failed to gain any meaningful traction. But Twitter just recently put themselves in the photo-sharing game in partnership with Photobucket. Given that Twitter is such an important social discovery mechanism for Instagram, does this worry Systrom? “I’m excited to see how a more first-class experience of photos on Twitter will allow people to have a better Instagram experience within Twitter,” he says. In other words, he think the rising tide will boost all boats, including his.
There are also a number of apps popping up that are attempting to be the “Instagram of video”. That’s interesting since Instagram does not currently support the sharing of videos — might they move in that direction? “I still think it’s early — mobile video will always be slower to download and consume than photos,” Systrom notes. “Instagram is about fast, beautiful experiences. Short snippets of friends’ lives,” he continues.
At the same time, “video is something that I think fits naturally into our roadmap — just not at the moment,” Systrom says.
Given that Instagram is still iOS-only, surely they must have some thoughts about the just-announced iOS 5. “iOS5 provides some really awesome new tools for Instagram users. Twitter integration makes it easier than ever for users to share their photos with their followers,” Systrom says. Since they have no need for DM access, Instagram should be one of the key apps helped by the new, deep iOS Twitter integration.
It’s pretty well known as this point that Apple executive Phil Schiller is a big time user of Instagram. But we’ve heard other Apple executives are hooked on the service too — though more under the radar.
“It’s not surprising that notification demos featured Instagram — we send over 10 million Push Notifications per day,” Systrom says. “And I think having a home for all those pushes to be out of the way and usefully grouped makes total sense,” he says of the new notifications system in iOS 5.
As for Apple’s new Photostream feature (which shares pictures you take on your devices automatically with your other devices over iCloud), “Photostream is really awesome. I think there was a big focus on unity between your Apple devices this year. So it totally makes sense for photos to sync between devices,” Systrom says. “I’d imagine photos you take with Instagram will get sync’d as well, but I’m unaware of exactly how it works,” he continues.
Assuming that Instagram’s huge growth keeps up, they could very well hit 6 million users before the end of June. And 10 million before the end of the year looks like a shoo-in. And none of that is taking into account the possibility of an Android app before the end of the year. Let’s just hope Instagram finds a fifth employee before then.
