Did I mention how much I love Instagram?
I didn't?
Okay. Well, it's safe to say I am obsessed with this app and its precious, awesome community. In next to no time, all my base are belong to Instagram. It has stealthily taken apart and re-made my online life in the course of a few weeks. And it's mobile: it's an on-the-go service, not something I have to sit down and use at a desktop - so I AM talking about my *whole* life, much to the chagrin of my wife and child :)
This weekend Instagram passed 3 million users. This is massive because we're talking about 3 million iPhone users only (you can't currently add photos any other way), and in recognition of the total hotness, co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger were interviewed by TechCrunch about their plans and what they think Instagram means.
Hint: it's not a mobile photo-sharing service
Mike and Kevin are now describing Instagram as:
A storytelling service and a new entertainment service
I can see what they mean, but I'm not so sure I'd call it "entertainment".
I think they're using that word because we're all comfortable with what it means - you know, in a way that we're not so comfortable with "remote viewing", "mind-streaming" or "digitally mediated extra-sensory perception". We may simply not have the words yet to describe the job that Instagram-like services will play in our lives in the future.
Of course, people said some of these things about Twitter - and in some ways Twitter is a bit like ESP. But Twitter is fundamentally a messaging platform. The messages are predominantly in text and shared links. Sure, you can share links to images like Twitpic and YFrog et al but it's not the same as Instagram which seems more like second sight to me: predominantly visual, more like seeing the world through someone else's eyes, more like a super-power.
There are some people who argue that Instagram is a "single purpose app" that does nothing significantly more than we could already do using pre-existing tools. Flickr die-hards point out that we've been able to share and stream using their service - yes, even on mobile phones - for years.
What-ev-ah...
I haven't been to Flickr or uploaded a single photo to that service (a service I actually pay for...) since I fell in love with Instagram - and that's because compared to Instagram it's horribly difficult, clunky and desk-bound. Writing this has reminded me that I need to cancel my subscription.
Since Yahoo bought Flickr, I've had a nightmare with passwords - I'm not even sure I can get in. I've never used a Flickr mobile service or app that's as mindlessly simple as Instagram, and despite being a member of Flickr since February 2005 I still only have 67 friends using the service.
By contrast, Instagram's greatest success is its pared down super-simplicity.
You see something, you whip out your iPhone. You take a shot and then you send it directly to someone else's brain. It's over in seconds (most of the time). It's sharing at the speed of thought, almost. Flickr isn't like that.
In fact, I think Instagram makes it easier and quicker than it's ever been to think of an image and send it into someone else's brain.
This is a huge deal, since we are primarily visual creatures.
We think in pictures, not text and messages. Our brains function by "imagining" and "visualizing" things: people, situations, places you'll never go to, cake.
This is true even when our eyes no longer work. Being able to share images is central to storytelling, dreaming, communication, love, cake - pretty much all of human existence. Words and languages are just a shorthand way to do this, useful ways of working around technology that hasn't been able to support images as human societies and cultures have grown in scale.
I'm not suggesting that Instagram-like services will replace writing. I'm simply trying to explain the significance of being able to make and share images seamlessly, quickly, wherever and whenever we please.
I say images, because I think we're talking about something more than photos.
This is why we see a proliferation of simple processing and image editing tools around Instagram. The filters aren't a big deal to me for their own sake, but they do lend an emotional weight to images and are just one example of a wide set of tools that make up Instagram's rapidly growing storytelling ecosystem.
I currently use:
- Emoji - Emoji is Japanese for pictograph, and these emoticon-like images are basically an additional foreign language set that you can add to your iPhone. Then you can have all sort of hilarious fun...
- Labelbox - Take photos and then stick labels on them, including this cool DYMO type label. By the way, Labelbox labels will allow you to put Emoji characters into them (btw - why have DYMO not created an iPhone app??)
- TiltShiftGen - This is you can do all those cool miniature looking shots, or at least it was before Instagram included a Tilt Shift tool in their latest release. I still like the original because of the absurd amounts of colour saturation and vignetting it'll let you do. Oh yeah, and the round blur tool. And the contrast. Get it. Use it way too much. You'll never get bored.
- Hipstamatic - I've been using this a little more over the last week, simply for the far greater richness it gives to images. So many filters, lenses and films... so little time.
- ColorSplash - Lets you converting shots to black and white, while highlighting areas to keep in colour. Also gives you some control over the saturation and contrast.
- Diptic - Allows you to create images from multiple photos in lots of types of grids, rows and columns.
- HollerGram - Okay, hands up, we made this one and it only works on an iPad but it's great for making an image out of text and can then be brought into Instagram and processed there or through any of the above. Made a fab Mother's Day card this weekend - well, my Mum thinks so...
Each of these adds a little nuance or control to the digitally mediated visual imagination we can share through Instagram. I love the way that Instagram seems to be democratising image manipulation by making it cheap (most of these are either free, or around £0.49/$0.99, compared to hundreds of pounds for Photoshop), but also by breaking it into tiny manageable components called apps.
Finally, the ability to do all of the above within a social context provides a wonderfully natural new way to conceptualise a social network. We are not merely visual creatures, but highly social ones as well. I definitely feel closer to the people I know on Instagram than any other social/community tool, app or service I have ever used. It's true that this spills across other social tools like Twitter - I use them together - but it's stronger and more natural and rewarding than Facebook or Twitter alone. I am finding more common ground with Instagram.
Instagram CEO Mike Krieger describes it like this:
Seeing the world through other people's eyes
That's a great soundbite, but it's actually a pretty profound new super-power. I don't think we've seen anything yet in terms of the way people are going to start using Instagram.
If you're thinking about what the future of shared online experiences might be then it's worth investing the full 17.5 minutes in watching the video below. Not that it will tell you exactly what the future will be like, but there are definitely some interesting clues in Instagram. I've embedded it below.
23 comments
Nicely written perspective.
I’ve been a slow and steady user of instagram myself and I have to admit at first, I didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
It’s one of the few apps that allows me to post something to FB, Twitter and Foursquare all at once.
Something I’ve noticed is that since finding Instagram I don’t touch Twitter at the weekend or when I’m away from my desk. The experience is so much more quiet than Twitter which is full of everyone showing off or expounding views on something – whereas Instagram is peaceful and you’re right, it’s a storytelling device.
I read this with some delight, like a kid approaching a candy store with a dollar bill found on the sidewalk.
And then I wondered, why are we delighted by so many different ways to do the same basic thing? I can’t fathom, really, my need to check email and Gmail and Google Chat and Twitter and Facebook and Yahoo mail and Yahoo messenger and voicemail and cell phone voicemail and fax and the real mail each day. Confounding this is I’m to blame for much of my fragmented communications, constantly opting in for new ways to share. Embedded and cross-shredded through this are snippets of different social graphs, each with aspects that interweb me with people of different modalities and timeframes.
Why are our points of entry so fragmented, for what in utility is typing, talking, or sharing images? Why is it so hard to connect with others, and so delightful to add to this hardship?
I don’t have an answer … but I’m stoked to try ColorSplash.
Totally agree with you here, Instagram is truly awesome. So much more intimate, interesting and creative than anything I experience on Twitter. Having a photo loved by others is so much more rewarding than a tweet retweeted, wouldn’t you say?
If Twitter is about ambient intimacy, we have to invent a term for the phenomena of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. I like that.
Can’t believe you needed words to say this. If you were really creative you would have Instagrammed the entire post.
@edwardboches Ha! The image at the top of the page pretty much says it. I’d be happy with that. Thanks to @Alex_R_Harding, or @thebeardedone on Instagram. These people with different instagram names are really going to have to sort it out sharpish.
First, I think that comparing Instagram to Flickr is missing the point of both services, as well as not understanding—or at least not recognizing in the blog—the very different users of each.
Second, I think Instagram allows a false “art” that somehow adds a layer of false meaning to something actually devoid of meaning. I.e., how many of us really want to see an iPhone snapshot of a ‘96 Ford in a parking lot—but slap a 70’s Polaroid color filter on it and blammo, ooooh, ahhhh…
I answered this on Twitter the other day and it seemed to resonate: Twitter is about sharing things I think are clever and interesting, Instagram is about sharing things I think are beautiful or funny. There’s a step change, for me, in the intimacy of that relationship. If beauty is truth (to get Keatsian on it) then what I find beautiful is a fairly profound truth about me.
I love your second sight analogy and I’d take it one step further-not just “I see the world through your eyes” but “I see the world as you see and I like it” AND “You see the world as I see it and you like it”. There’s an extraordinary empathy and connection there.
Final thought is the mindfulness involved in Instagram-it has an impact on how we walk in the world, looking out a bit more for the funny, beautiful or strange-that has to be a daily delight.
I’ve read many criticisms of Instagram that pertain to “false art” or “illusion of creativity”. I couldn’t disagree more. In fact I find it to be an enabler of creativity. Providing a user a means of simple, effective editing to more clearly share their vision. That is what I love about Instagram.
I don’t use Instagram to share my photos there. I upload photos I’ve edited with Instagram to my Facebook news feed. It’s easy to do, and like others have mentioned, the last thing I need is another social network.
@PatsMc I love the final sentence you wrote above. Being new to NYC, I find myself thinking about the city scape much differently knowing how easy it is to share with others.
Wonderful post as always, Tim.
I love Instagram, too. Love the ‘in the moment’ nature of it. But I like the http://sxsw.madebymany.com/ platform you guys created even more. Curating stories in this way provided context.
Instagram.. What’s not to love? The road Instagram’s on makes Flickr and Hipstamatic look like they’re regretting not going through with that cheeky post sxsw hotel room threesome.. with ‘party unknown’.
On a more serious note;
It’s gotten to the point where everyone I know with an iphone,uses Instagram. The only trouble I’m having with Instagram, is the transition towards NOT posting every image to my twitter stream . Everything turns out so damn delicious looking! Though Instagram updates on twitter are much more enjoyable than foursquare/gowalla checkins (the ones devoid of contextual joke or general comment that is).. I don’t give a damn if you’re mayor of the coffee shop down the street. But I’d love to see what their cutlery looks like.
In short Instagram to me is; If it’s worth sharing, it’s worth seeing.. Or vice verca.
Great post Tim. As usual.
Love this post. Love me some Instagram. I think @PatsMc said it best—it is truly about “sharing beauty and the funny of the everyday”. It’s got a close, personal feel to it—these are things that are actually happening in your life, at this moment. I love the honesty that this requires. More than a well crafted status update or tweet, a picture is worth a thousand words (cheesy, I know).
Instagram also renders the everyday, maybe somewhat mundane places/spaces/experiences a bit rosier (or lomo-fied, if you prefer), a bit more interesting and in turn can even change the way you experience the everyday. I definitely found that last week, when strolling down the lovely streets of London, seeing little flashes of beauty in unexpected places that I never would have thought of before.
If it comes back down to determining whether or not it is “art”, I think we have to ask ourselves if we hold all such things we share up to such high standards—who cares if there’s a filter on it? It represents a moment in your life the way YOU want to remember it.
@Balindsieber Hmm – maybe you should check out a few more lifestreaming apps. You’ll find a list of them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestreaming
@Grumblemouse – I think you’re so right about the ‘peacefulness’. I love it – it offers a new way of seeing. That’s immensely intimate, despite the shareyness… And yeah – I’m definitely not spending so much time with Twitter, although I still love Twitter and want to carry on using it – it’s far more useful than Instagram is for intent-based messagey stuff.
@BenKunz Thanks Ben. I think you’re right – but all those things that are roughly similar are also subtly different. To make matters worse, they are each independently evolving – so even when you think you have a handle on one it changes along with all of its competitors.
It certainly is a bittersweet problem. For me, feeling overloaded with novelties is the candy moment I hate/crave…
However, having said all of that – I think I’ll be using Instagram for a while now, alongside Twitter and Facebook (reluctantly) and alongside a bunch of things I will trial and reject. I’m glad you like it.
T
Cheers @Chroma. Totally agree. It’s a more real response I think. Less intellectual. More intuitive?
@TJ HOOKER Well I really don’t understand that comment. How on earth are you defining:
“false “art” that somehow adds a layer of false meaning to something actually devoid of meaning.”?
How is this more fake than the way other photographers and image-makers take or make pictures? Surely, they always have the control over the image they author… it’s just that this makes it easier and opens it up to non-experts… is that what you don’t like? That real people can make what you call ‘Fake art’?
I mean, you really need to have a think about what ‘art’ means…
@PatsMc Yes indeed I love this:-
“I see the world as you see and I like it” AND “You see the world as I see it and you like it”. There’s an extraordinary empathy and connection there. "
@Brendankeenan Please have a word with TJ Hooker — what the hell is he talking about? I’ve read this about Instagram as well… seems like a very stupid thing to say I’m afraid…
Doh!
Thanks for commenting
@SteveBridger @Thaz7 @Snorrem You are all far too kind.
Funnily enough I suddenly found myself feeling quite guilty for being so unkind about Flickr. I did love Flickr, and I’d really like to stay in touch… there are many incredible and vibrant communities within Flickr – I’m thinking of the guys who make and share insane lego creations, or the food groups, or the local groups — and it goes on. It’s still a huge mountain to climb for Instagram to build real community that lasts for years. I do however think that a stream-like, mobile-first service is the way ahead. Speed, simplicity and ease of use… all good.
T
One of the really interesting things about Instagram for me is its transience. A photo is in your stream now but once it slips down it’s gone. It’s the ultimate shared experience because it’s about the moment, and if you miss the moment you’re not a part of it, but it allows you to extend that shared experience to a group people who aren’t with you in meat space. It’s far more emotional than Twitter which is also transient but in a more 24-hour news kind of way.
Really glad to see so many others as jazzed about Instagram as I have become over the recent months. And for so many reasons too.
Another notion worth considering (and @TJ Hooker may be inadvertedly touching upon the subject of it) is the idea of photos being more “high art” and “precious.” Apple’s democratization of both inexpensive apps as filters and a better camera as the image capturer mean that more people can take better photos quicker— with a look that would have required hundreds of dollars in equipment to achieve.
I used to care so much about exactly what my photo was saying and the mood I was creating in order to create “art” that it sometimes got in the way of enjoying the moment for what it was — just a moment. Among all the qualities of the app’s sociability, liking, serendipity is that for me the fleeting nature of the stream makes the moments less “precious” and fussed-with and more authentic and visceral.
There will always be people that only believe good photography is accomplished with expensive equipment (and there are truly some amazing professional photographers in the world) but I love that Instagram allows more people to approach the “moment” without all the fussiness. It’s just more truth to the moment. Thanks for the post Tim.
Instagram is an impressive app and has beautiful filters. It replaces the sharing of photo albums with sharing photos digitally. Simple and quick are important qualities in today’s fast-moving world. Instagram’s popularity evidences that people still want to share their stories with others. “The more things change…”
@clweinfeld