Items tagged with instagram
Facebook said that it would enable Instagram to remain independent, and that it wouldn't ever cross any lines that would impact the user experience. Keeping true to that promise, Instagram itself (and not parent company Facebook) has just made a big acquisition: Luma. It's a video sharing app that almost no one has heard of... until now. Luma was previously known as Midnox, and while sharing was one of its features, video stabilization was the other. It's likely that Instagram executives are more interested in the latter. Luma will indeed be shutting down soon, as its employees focus all of their energy on bettering Instagram. Luma's iOS app has already been removed from the App Store, and existing...
Read more...
If there's one thing Microsoft's Windows Phone platform desperately needs (other than a larger user base), it's more apps. We're not talking about fart apps and other filler type material, but at this point, it's even missing some of the more popular apps available on other platforms. One you can soon cross off the list, however, is Instagram. Chris Weber, Nokia's executive vice president, reportedly confirmed that Instagram is headed to the Windows Phone Store during a recent trip to Thailand. He didn't say exactly when Instagram will be available to Windows Phone users, only that it's coming. This will be a major addition for Microsoft. Instagram is hugely popular with over 130 million users...
Read more...
Quick video clips are all the rage right now, and if you find yourself shaking your head at that statement, grab your teenager's smartphone and look at what apps are installed. You'll likely find Vine (acquired by Twitter for $30 million) and Instagram (acquired by Facebook for $1 billion) on there, and perhaps SnapChat, all of which allow you to record and share short videos (SnapChat's approach is a bit different since videos and pics expire after they're viewed by the recipient for up to 10 seconds). You can add one more to the mix. The newest video sharing app is called MixBit, the creation of Chad Hurley and Steven Chen,. If those names sound familiar, it's because they're two of the three...
Read more...
Facebook isn't about to let its $1 billion acquisition of Instagram go to waste. Continued innovation is the secret to both remaining relevant in an increasingly crowded field of apps that offer filters for photos and videos, and to seeing a return on such a hefty investment. Towards that end, the Instagram team just unveiled web embedding for photos and videos. "Now, when you visit an Instagram photo or video page on your desktop web browser, you’ll see a new share button on the right side of your photo (just under the comments button). Click the button to see the embed code. Copy the block of text it gives you and paste it into your blog, website or article. When you hit publish, the...
Read more...
When it comes to the web business, you might say you know you've "arrived" when the spammers show up. Instagram, the blazingly hot photo and video-sharing service owned by Facebook and now topping 130 million monthly active users, definitely seems to have crossed that threshold. You might say Instagram is where all the cool kids are going after Facebook actually. Well, it seems that spammers have taken a liking to Instragram's popularity as well and have showed up in droves to attack the burgeoning community. If you've recently seen a rash of fruity looking pictures hitting your stream, you're not going crazy and no, your friends aren't trying to get you to join the latest all-fruit...
Read more...
You would have to spend an awful long time sitting in front of your mobile device in order to watch every single Instagram video that's been uploaded to date. The new feature was announced earlier this week and users wasted no time playing armchair director. In just the first 24 hours since the video recording and sharing feature went live, Instagram users recorded and uploaded 5 million video clips, a company spokesperson told CNET. That's great news for Facebook, which paid a whopping $1 billion for Instagram, and potentially bad news for Vine, which could suddenly find itself the second most popular short video app. Instagram's 130 million iOS and Android users quickly took advantage of the...
Read more...
As expected, Facebook dropped a big announcement today pertaining to Instagram and video: starting today, users can share up to 15 seconds of video in essentially the same way they share photos. When preparing to take a photo, there will now be a little movie camera icon you can tap to switch to video mode. Video on Instagram (which is of course Facebook’s answer to Vine) offers thirteen different filters you can choose from, and users will be able to choose an image from the video to use as a cover image, which is a nice touch and will also help users remember which video is of what. Privacy with Video on Instagram is the same as with photos: “Only the people who you let see your...
Read more...
Something's brewing at Facebook, and as we reported last week, the social networking service is planning a launch event for June 20, 2013. Early speculation suggested the big reveal would be a news reader, which would fill a ginormous void left by the shuttering of Google Reader. However, sources say Facebook has something else up its sleeve. According to TechCrunch, Facebook is likely to unveil a new video shooting and sharing feature to Instagram. Similar to Twitter's Vine service, Instagram videos would be short clips between 5 second and 10 seconds long. While nothing has yet been confirmed, if this happens, you can probably expect a collection of filters, too. Before you get your hopes up,...
Read more...
Guess what? Instagram is getting more social. Hardly a surprise given that Facebook is the current parent, and there's hardly a better way to see that a piece of shared media goes viral than by enabling tagging. Once someone sees that they're tagged, they're more likely to interact with that content, and perhaps even share it once again to yet another network of friends. And that's the network impact. Now, Instagram is introducing "Photos of You." When you upload a photo to Instagram, you’re now able to add people as easily as you add hashtags. Only you can add people to your photos, so you have control over the images you share. And it doesn’t stop at people—you can add any...
Read more...
Just a year after launching the Android version of Instagram and bringing the incredibly popular iOS app to a huge new trove of users, the photo-sharing service noted on its blog that now, about half of all Instagram users are running Android. Instagram says that on the first day of its availability on the Android platform, one million people downloaded the app. Shortly thereafter, Facebook bought the company and bumped the usership from 30 million to 40 million almost overnight. Now, Instagram has around 100 million active monthly users (and 40 million images uploaded daily), which means that approximately 50 million Instagrammers use an Android device; a year ago, there were zero Android users....
Read more...
Pundits wondered why Facebook would pay a billion dollars for Instagram, when it only had around 30 million users. This is why. Despite a mainstream backlash over privacy and policy changes a few months back, the sign-up rate at Instagram has been tremendous. In fact, the photo sharing company just announced that after two years of hard work, over 100 million people are now members. That's a huge, huge number, and it makes sense that Facebook wanted to get in on the roller coaster ride as Instagram was still sailing high. It's tough to envision how long it'll take Instagram to double up (or triple up, even) from here, but with Facebook intertwined, the sky probably is the limit. So, are you on...
Read more...
Instagram addicts can now get their fix of filtered photos even when their mobile phone batteries run out of juice. How so? The Facebook-owned service announced that you can now browse your Instagram feed on the web from your desktop or laptop, just like you do on your mobile device. All you have to do is head to Instagram's website and log into your account. "We believe that you should be able to access Instagram on a variety of different devices, any of which may be convenient to you at a given moment – including your desktop computer or tablet," Instagram stated in a blog post. "We do not offer the ability to upload from the web as Instagram is about producing photos on the go, in the...
Read more...
It’s way too early to see if Vine is going to mean long-term success for Twitter, but it’s certainly getting off to an auspicious start. The video service, which lets users embed 6-second videos in their tweets, has already broken into the top 15 apps in the iTunes App Store. On top of that, Vine may have already made enemies with Facebook, as evidenced by an “error” now preventing Vine users from copying their Facebook friends into their Vine directory. Right now, Vine is only available for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see Android versions out soon. After all, Vine is killing it in the iTunes App Store. At the moment (and only a...
Read more...
There was a massive public uproar on the Internet a month ago when Instagram tried changing its Terms of Service (ToS) agreement so that it could sell your pictures for profit. Following the backlash, Instagram tried to say it was a big misunderstanding over standard legalese, and then vowed to change the wording to appease the masses. It appears to have worked. For the first time, Instagram revealed statistics about its user base, claiming it has over 90 million monthly active users. Some more fun stats to chew on: 40 million photos per day 8,500 Likes per second 1,000 comments per second Since there are no previous numbers to compare these with, it's impossible to know if Instagram lost a significant...
Read more...
