Instagram revelation photo sharing function to the extreme

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

Summary: Whether you think Instagram is Lomo-twitter or poladroid+iphoneography. For many people, it is no stranger. Photo-sharing service Instagram 6 months ago on the line, 24th last month publicly released the support real-time functionality of the API, Third-party developers can be based on the label, the ground ...

Whether you think Instagram is Lomo-twitter or poladroid+iphoneography. For many people, it is no stranger.

Photo-sharing service Instagram 6 months ago, and last month 24th publicly released APIs that support real-time functionality, and Third-party developers can grab photos based on tags, locations, and regions. Data show that Instagram currently adds 130,000 users a week. 2.2 million users per week upload 3.6 million photos, or 6 photos per second. (data from Analysis Services Rjmetrics)

Instagram last month, Benchmark Capital, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Quora co-founder Adam D ' Angelo, and other VC in the hands of the 7 million-dollar first round of financing (via VentureBeat), Matt Cohler, benchmark partner and former vice president of Facebook Product management, will enter the board. At present its main competitor has PICPLZ, SNAPR, path and so on.

Photo service is not a new idea, Web Flickr, Picasa, live albums are already very powerful, why they did not first win the share of mobile Internet, but is Instagram popular?

Low cost advantage

This can be said to be the advantage of all startups: the cost of using large platforms, making strategic adjustments, and updating versions is much lower than for big companies. Instagram it took the opportunity to integrate Twitter and Facebook, and to run quickly and iteratively.

Someone asked on the Quora: Why does Flickr not have a Instagram-like product? Former Flickr architect Kellan Elliott-mccrea said:

1. The Twitter login system has never been very secure, and if Flickr were to use Twitter's social networking advantage to launch a product based on its login, Yahoo would definitely get off the shelf immediately.

2. The Flickr team spent 6 months talking to Twitter about how to use Flickr as a priority for Twitter photo sharing, and lost the opportunity to first launch an integrated Twitter product.

3. Flickr has been trying to develop native Flickr mobile software several times since 06, but it has been ruthlessly suppressed by Yahoo executives, Marco boerries.

Google has a similar problem, and critic Robert Scoble published a blog about it:

1. Google has no way to keep the team to a certain small size, meaningless opinions of the meeting to make inefficient.

2. Google cannot cut demand as aggressively as Instagram. Instagram only needs to compete with itself, and Google has to compete head-on with Facebook.

3. At Google, if a product succeeds, the team faces a flood of emails and a large number of colleagues waiting outside their offices to join in (20%).

4. Google requires their employees to use their own infrastructure, such as you can only use big table to store data, you can not use MySQL. The problem is that these infrastructures are not suitable for small social-networking projects, are not easy to use, and are less efficient than external developers.

5. Google's services need to support all platforms, and a lot of testing slows down. The Instagram only supports the iphone, initially in English only.

6. Google cannot use Facebook to integrate products, which means it can be a bit difficult to get new users.

7. Google has no way to test products in half public, it is the practice of "we eat our own dogfood". The problem is that Google's engineers and geek are not necessarily familiar with photography enthusiasts. Instagram the outside dozens of people to test without scruple.

8. Google is unable to use Eric Ries's "skinny start-up" approach. Eric's approach is to first figure out what the customer needs and then build the infrastructure and future scalability needed. Google, on the other hand, needs to make sure that hundreds of millions of people use it, and then start making the product.

Differentiated competition

This is in the Internet product is "product temperament" problem, Twitter and Sina Weibo all support sharing images, but there is a very large product temperament difference between "sharing photos" and "photo sharing", and different smells attract different user groups and induce different user behaviors. This "simple/vertical/stylized" competitiveness is a small product against large companies. (via sterling silver)

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said their initial idea was to develop a location-based service software called "Burbn," but after the development of native applications, they felt that too much functionality was lost, leaving only the current trait: photos are the only language. You just need to register your user ID and you no longer need to add any user details, tags, and introductions to it (Facebook, Twitter, and social networking will bring you friends). You can't even find anything called a "link" in the interface-it refuses to interact with any external "web", or just a button that leads to each other with a variety of special effects and multiple-style photos.

Kevin says: "I don't think people need to read and explain too much on Instagram, and I need to simplify it." We have to focus on the functionality of the product and keep the one that is most attractive (via global entrepreneur)

The iphone also gives it a differentiated competitive edge, with the iphone's camera taking photos of a professional camera, as well as high-speed WiFi and 3G networks, which have the initial enthusiasm of the user and elegant temperament. (isn't Android a smart choice or a soft spot?) They have long had plans to enter the Android phone, but did not disclose the time. The diversity of Android phones is a big problem to consider.

Focus, professional

Cut off the branches, Instagram is also trying to make the photo sharing function to the extreme.

Photo processing, it is provided with Lomo, yellowing of the old photos, Lily, Poprocket, Inkwell and Aplool, such as 12 special effects filters, as long as you know a little basic knowledge of the composition, you can "rotten film into blockbuster", can ignore the phone to take photos of the weakest ray processing links. In the profit model, they tend to earn their income by selling filters, so that those who love themselves and love their own photographic work are willing to pay.

Easy to share comments feature, one-click Share to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr platform.

Focus, professional to build the ecological chain

The benefits of building the ecological chain are obvious to all: strengthen their own camp to build barriers, split part of the function to a more professional team to create a better user experience, focus on core function building, enhance user stickiness.

Instagram released the API at the end of last month, Third-party developers can now grab photos in 4 ways: User update hints, tags, locations, and Geography (Demo experience site). According to the description of Instagram: User update hint refers to the user to Instagram upload new photos, the associated application will receive a message; tags are applications can be based on the user to add to the photo tag to track updates, location locations refers to the use of specific location information tracking user updates; Geo-geographies means that an application developer can select a latitude or geographic radius to determine the tracking location area (a larger dimension than locations). (via TechCrunch)

For example, if you are a foodspotting user and have already linked Instagram account to foodspotting, then when you put a picture labeled "#food" to Instagram, Foodspotting will automatically crawl these photos through the Instagram real-time API.

1. Instagram and application partners

After Instagram open APIs, partners such as gourmet sharing services foodspotting, file storage services Dropbox, personal journaling application Momento, social news application Flipboard, Network business card about.me and OBJECT tag applications The fancy also launch or will publish a new version of the integrated Instagram. (via TechCrunch)

2. Instagram and derivative applications

This is very interesting, such as screening beautiful photos of the otaku love application Bijostagram, it claims also used an algorithm to determine whether the person in the photo is mm. (via Asiajin)

There are a number of subdivisions:

Meng Cat Nekostagram (Neko is a Japanese "cat")

Beer Beergram

Rabbit Usastagram (Usagi is a Japanese "rabbit")

Hamster Hamstagram

Curry Currystagram

Football Jleaguram (J league is Japanese football professional league Japan Pro as league)

Dog Inustagram (Inu is a Japanese "dog")

Color Irostagram (some rich and colorful photos)

(These derivative applications are developed by the Japanese.) Interestingly, Instagram found that in countries where Twitter was used very often, the number of users was high from the start, with Japan the most representative. The Japanese like the iphone, they like to take pictures with their mobile phones, the mobile community is developed and Twitter users are far more active than Facebook. One view is that Instagram is not fundamentally different from the functionality that Twitter offers. The process of taking a photo is like writing a carefully worded microblog, which also needs to be filtered to create a personal brand of creation and then send it to other users through sharing. Users can also follow, comment, vote and forward, creating the most popular users and photos naturally. Via "Global Entrepreneur"

3. Instagram and business partners

In addition to filters, Instagram is looking for other profit models that are simple and not disruptive to the user experience. The label function allows the brand to launch a campaign. To show how the brand uses this new feature, Instagram has established partnerships with Red Bull, Starbucks, Kate Spade, Charity:water, Reeves, Pepsi's brisk iced tea and NPR. They launch the # tag campaign. For example, brisk iced tea allows users to upload photos with #briskpic tags, selected will be printed on a limited edition product packaging. (via Mashable)

Source: http://technode.com/archives/1992/