Instagram & the Rise of Mobile Sharing
With the sale of Instagram, I thought it was fitting to post my first ever Instagram photo. I joined in October 2010, so I’ve been all over it from the beginning. The best part about Instagram is they did something that was extremely simple (editing and sharing pictures), but they did it extremely well. I think their success shows the next push of social media: simple, mobile based sharing platforms.
The fact is this… Facebook isn’t going anywhere (especially with a market cap potentially exceeding $110 billion). Facebook will serve as everyone’s main social network, and that network will inevitably grow over time. What will change, is how you post to this network. When I edit and upload a picture in Instagram, I then have the choice to share it through Facebook. When I post a blog entry in Tumblr, I eventually share it on Facebook. When I post an update in Path (the next big app), I can post that update to Facebook. The common thread here… sharing to Facebook.
Idon’t know Facebook’s intentions with Instagram, but what I do know is that the integration between the two has grown stronger over the last few months. As recently as January 2012, Instagram announced that all photo’s that users checked as “Share to Facebook” would appear as full size images with captions on Facebook, as opposed to just straight links as it was previously. At the time it seemed like a great new feature, now it seems like beginning of this larger relationship.
In my opinion, Facebook recognized that Instagram was a growing social network, and that market sentiment would require further and further integration over time. It only made sense to accept that fact, and acquire Instagram, rather than fight it off and compete against it. A battle would have benefited neither party.
Not to mention, there’s still money to be made from Instagram alone. YouTube looks like a bargain in retrospect. Instagram has zero revenue at this point, but I think through sponsored accounts/pics, and now with increased access to Facebook’s network, there will be plenty of money to make.
The moral of the story is, everything is about sharing. The next big social media centric mobile app that will be getting buzz is going to be Path. It acts as a ‘mobile journal’, and is much more private than your Facebook or Twitter. Like Instagram, it allows for sharing on other networks as well when you’d like. Again, a simple, mobile based sharing platform. What will come next?.. who knows… but I can almost guarantee that the next big apps will be add on’s to the networks we’re all building day in and day out, on Facebook and Twitter. Cause at the end of the day, we all want more friends and more followers.