When Twitter cut off Instagram from its API there were questions about the effect the move would have on Twitter. As it turns out the shutdown hurt Twitter’s quarter-over-quarter engagement per photo fell, while Instagram’s own engagement increased by 30 percent.
While Twitter has put a lot of stock in the Twitter Cards system, specifically Twitter Photo Cards, it turns out that most users would rather click on a link to view Instagram photos.
The team at Column Five visualized the entire shift from Twitter to Instagram in a new infographic. Column Five worked with Simply Measured in February 2013 to determine the shift caused by the Twitter shut down of Instagram.
What Column Five and Simply Measured discovered was that engagement with brands since that time has grown by 35% on Instagram while brand follower count grew by 41%.
They also offer some helpful tips for tracking your social media photo sharing, for example, use Instagram for photo sharing on Facebook to increase engagement.
If you want to increase Twitter engagement you need to upload pictures directly to the Twitter photo sharing system and not through Instagram.
Gnip has added Instagram, Reddit, Bitly And Panaramio to its firehose of data licenses. The company was previously collecting data from  Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress and Disqus. Data collected by the company was then sold to brands so they could better understand how their products are being discussed on social media.
Gnip will now use public posts from its new services along with their APIs to fold further data into its subscription based reports.
In a blog post Gnip notes:
“Our customers care about every public conversation that happens online.”
Using the new platform marketers will be able to monitor Instagram posts by keyword or by geolocation. With Bitly and Reddit brands will be able to track links that are being shared about their products. read more
Instagram has passed a huge milestone, announcing that it now serves more than 100 million monthly active users.
Announced in a blog post by co-founder Kevin Systrom, the news of the tremendous milestone arrives just 28 months after Instagram launched to much fanfare.
In mid-January Instagram announced that it has reached 90 million monthly active users (MAUs). The 90 million mark was the first time Instagram had ever officially revealed MAU data.
News of the 100 million users milestone and the company’s growth of nearly 10 million users in one month arrives after the company’s announced TOS changes caused an uproar and promises of fleeing the photo-based network. read more
In the wake of the epic stories surrounding the inimitable Facebook and its latest acquisition, Instagram, one has to wonder how many more questionable actions can manifest from the camp of the social media giant. I, am of course referring to the squawking over the TOS back in December. This could spell long-term PR trouble. What exactly is Facebook doing?
Let’s get the facts straight. Instagram may still be having issues, what with its public traffic data being ripped from public view recently. But the company has apparently stemmed the flow of angry users fleeing the site like a burning building.However sometimes, it’s too little too late, as it’s been widely noted that 25% of the active user base was lost in the aftermath. Instagram backpedaled on the issue, saying, “It would not sell members’ photos”. This was followed closely by a quote from the company, ”that statement is not authorized for publication.” O rly, Instagram? There’s no sense of irony in that statement!
This overarching argument about data and its right to be withheld or published, is a longstanding argument within social media ranks that goes back almost as far as the inception of journalism itself. Facebook, and its user base, is in the midst of a cold war over the fact that deleted accounts do not mean entire removal from the site. Users are able to download their data before doing so, but there is a finite period that accounts are cached in case the user changes their mind. What happens to the data after that time? Is it sold or otherwise leveraged for private gain? Or is it truly erased from the site? Facebook has said that the nature of caching in search engines in addition to “shares” on the site makes 100% data deletion truly impossible.
So the question remains, with only the most recent examples displayed for evidence. To answer the question bluntly, Facebook is shaping privacy policy so that is seemingly transparent but less comprehensible by most who engage the site. When was the last time you actually read a TOS when you registered to a site? A common joke among Facebook critics is, “Facebook is like a reverse eBay; you’re the product and the highest bidder gets access to your life”. So who is the highest bidder assisting Facebook shape privacy policy? Digital Sky Technologies, is the largest investor as of this writing and their partners’ history can be found here.
After ditching full photo displays (Vcards) from Twitter on Monday the team at Instagram wasted no time in debuting new features of its very own. The world’s largest social photo sharing platform announced updates for both its iOS and Android apps.
Instagram’s new features include integration with Foursquare, improvements to its camera integration standards and a new black-and-white filter.
All location pages for Instagram now feature a Foursquare button which launches the Foursquare app if installed or a website location if the Foursquare app is not featured on the users smartphone. In both cases Foursquare provides information about the venue where the photo was taken.
Also included via the update is a new grid guide that is used when taking or editing photos. Users can also now preview their most recent photos.
Photos also now save in the app and in a separate album on the users iOS or Android smartphone. The new album is simply titled Instagram. read more
Pictures of turkeys, Thanksgiving feasts, football, family members and other shots dominated the web on Thanksgiving day and millions of those photos were posted to the popular social photo website Instagram.
The photo platform which currently claims more than 100 million Google Android and Apple iOS smartphone and tablet users to its name literally saw millions of Thanksgiving Day 2012 posts.
According to the company it received more than 10 million Thanksgiving photos to various holiday themed hashtags. The biggest tags were #turkey and #thanksgiving. read more
Mark Zuckerberg and company originally agreed to pay $1 billion for social photo sharing company Instagram but ended up paying far less.
Purchased in April the social world was abuzz with news that Zuckerberg purchased the company without first talking to his board of directors.
In a quarterly investment report that was filed on Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission Facebook added 11 million shares to its total. Those new shares are valued at $194 million and were given to Instagram employees at the close of the September deal. read more
Instagram has only been around since 2010 but the social photo sharing service is quickly becoming a vehicle not only for traditional photo posting but also as a way to share events with massive reach. The social media engagement and monitoring firm VenueSeen recently took a look at photo sharing during the 2012 Summer Olympics and discovered that more than 64,000 pictures were Instagram shared by spectators and athletes in London.
Olympic organizers originally tried to ban the sharing of images, videos and audio recordings from the event, claiming copyright control over events, however with almost every visitor to the London Olympics carrying a smartphone that copyright protection proved to be impossible to control.
The massive sporting event eventually posted guidelines to be followed for athletes and spectators but instead pictures and videos flowed freely.
To determine which photos were Olympic generated the team at VenueSeen examined geo-tagged and hashtagged photos from the 2012 Olympics on Instagram. read more
Instagram isn’t just about adding filters to images, 40% of America’s top 100 brands are now using the social photo sharing website to build a stronger web presence while attracting new supporters.
The company Simply Measured conducted a quick study by examining the Interbrand Top 100 Global Brands list and then examining which of those company’s have a presence on Instagram. In comparison 98% of those brands are on Facebook and 94% are on Twitter.
Instagram is growing in important now that it has grown from 15 million iPhone users since the beginning of 2012 to more than 80 million iPhone and Google Android users since being purchased by Facebook.
Web users these days grow tired of the same old marketing practices at a rather alarming rate, with more brands realizing the power photos and Instagram integration can bring to their brands we can expect to see more Instagram accounts for top brands in the near future. read more
Several months ago I wrote an article about InstaBG.com, a platform that allows users to create daily or static Twitter backgrounds using Instagram photos. Now the company behind InstaBG has created Insta-WP, a program that once again integrates with Instagram, this time to create wallpaper images of various sizes.
Using Insta-WP is very simple, users starts by navigating to Insta-WP at which time they click on the “Create “InstaWallpaper” button.
The next part of the setup is to choose the wallpaper size which ranges from 320 x 480 pixels to a much larger 2048 x 1536. One of the nicest parts of the options screen is that Insta-WP tells you which sizes to use for each of your devices. For example the iPad 3 can use 2048 x 1536 pixel wallpapers while the Galaxy Tab 7.0 relies on 1024 x 600 pixels.
Here’s a preview of the Insta-WP screen size setup: read more
