Over the past few months I’ve been obsessed with a little app called Instagram. It’s an app for the iPhone that lets you take square format photos, apply a filter, then post to multiple services such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and others. You may seen the links to Instagram photos in your Facebook or Twitter stream, but Instagram is more than a “make your photos pretty and post to various services” app. It’s a community.
Within the app you can follow other users, comment or “like” their photos and discover other photographers via the popular feed or hashtags. Companies such as NPR and Starbucks have begun to utilize Instagram to disseminate news or post casual photos of company life.
As of now there isn’t web presence for Instagram users aside from the photos they decide to post to various services. The main Instagram experience is contained within the iPhone app, which makes it’s current 2 million user population all the more impressive. I expect that number to grow now that developers have access to the Instagram API and they start integrating it into their own apps and services.
I’ve posted a sample of my favorite Instagram shots above. You can find me on Instagram under the username “jim”.
The latest phenomenon scorching across the net is a little service called Twitter. Even though twitter recently turned a year old, it’s been the past few months that the service has begun to grow beyond the typical first adopter crowd. Everyone from the Dark Lord to presidential candidates can be found on the service. But what exactly is Twitter?
It’s a question not easily answered. It’s been described as a mini blog and an IM status on steroids. It’s accessible from the web, via IM, through SMS on your cellphone or a plethora of other mini applications and plug-ins. It’s a question the folks at twitter choose to answer with a question. What are you doing?
That’s the question you’re presented with. Some choose to take it literally (my current twitter status is “writing about twitter”). Some use it as a sort-of stream of consciousness tool. Others use it a communication device. However you choose to use it, your limited by 140 characters. While this limit is to account for SMS compatibility, I believe it’s part of what gives the service it’s identity. Anything more, it’s just another blog. Anything less, it’s a standard IM status message.
The first question most people new to the service ask is “Why do I want to do this?”. I asked myself the same question. It’s not until you start using it that you kind of get it. For one, it’s fun coming up with something to write within the character restrictions. But the more fascinating aspect for me is looking at your twitter stream. You get a mini history of what was apparently important enough for you to twitter about, but not necessarily important enough to blog about. A kind of “lifestream”. Even more fascinating is watching your friends streams or even the public timeline. At times you can get a “collective” feel to what’s going on in the world.
Now thanks to it’s open API, it’s begun to be utilized in other ways. Twittermap combines Google maps and Twitter allowing to you to see who’s twittering from where. And Twittervision takes that to the next level by updating in realtime.
Overall this is a service that is still trying to define itself. But in the end it will be the Twitter API and how the users choose to utilize it that shape it’s direction. However it evolves, it’s developers know they have something special. Twitter’s parent company Obvious is selling off it’s other service Odeo, a podcasting service, to concentrate on Twitter. They probably don’t have much to worry about though. After all, they do have the Dark Lord on their side.
