On Monday, Facebook bought Instagram. Every man and his dog had an opinion on the matter (some news outlets even had several, differing opinions). It certainly got the world talking.
So now the dust has settled, what do we know?
It’s been impossible to ignore the fact that photo sharing is growing massively in popularity. The success of Tumblr and Pinterest further underline this. And while many people have referred to Instagram as a photography app, it’s actually a complete, visual social network in its own right. Facebook has been in this market for a while, but rather than try to compete on Instagram’s terms, Facebook has chosen to buy a tool which has seen its users’ share over a billion photos on the iPhone app alone.
Although Facebook is the most popular photo-sharing service on the net, the acquisition brings over a talented pool of workers, each who will add value to Facebook. Not only that, Instagram just launched on Android, opening the app to millions more users.
As a Blackberry user, I initially failed to see the appeal of Instagram, mainly because I didn’t have access to the app. But as time moved on, I began seeing friends tweeting and uploading photos to Facebook through Instagram and I liked what I saw. Images were interesting, artistic and fun. It might have some photography purist detractors, but mostly, people love it.
It looks like Instagram is set to become mainstream and I look forward to seeing how Facebook manages this, integrating features and such. You can’t deny it is a huge step for what started as a little iPhone app and whether or not the astronomical price tag is the reason behind the huge quantities of conversation, Facebook has certainly set tongues wagging. There is no timescale on development at the moment (it’s not even live on the developers blog) but it is most certainly a partnership with a lot of advantages for both parties.
From Insight Executive Mark Stuart @MisterMumble #YomegoSocial