Apps Magazine reports today that Starmatic, an other mobile photo-sharing alternative, might be cooler than Instagram: http://www.knowyourapps.com/reviews/starmatic/
Have you tried this?
The End of @Instagram As We Know It?
I’m generally not one to shout “the sky is falling!” when free social media sites make moves toward monetization.
They’re free, after all, and at some point, they need to make some money. How they choose to make money is up to them. And if we don’t like it, we can go elsewhere.
With Instagram, though, it always seemed a bit different. Especially when Facebook shelled out gazillions for the app – that would seem to be the best monetization strategy, no?
And, it should be noted, Chirpify’s integration with Instagram isn’t a way for Instagram to make money, but rather a way to allow Instagrammers to buy and sell products beyond just their images (through services such as Instacanvas).
Sorry, let me back up. Chirpify is a web commerce platform. With the addition of the hashtag #InstaSale, Instagrammers will be able to buy and sell through the app without having to pull out their credit card or type in all sorts of security information. (It might be noted that you’ll want to be SUPER-careful who you let use your Instagram account if you have a Chirpify account.)
They’ve done something similar on Twitter, and just hooked into the Instagram API.
Speaking with some friends this morning, I was asked why this would be a bad thing. Those with Instagram accounts would still have to have quality images that would make people want to follow them and engage with them if they wanted to sell to them. Spammers wouldn’t be able to just drop in images to their nonexistent followers and peddle their wares, after all.
Except they would. There are many and varied hashtag communities on Instagram. Here in New York, probably the biggest and most vibrant is #igersnyc. Photos such as mine, in this post, taken in New York City, are hashtagged with #igersnyc and a huge community of photographers – professional and amateur – peruse them daily.
The community holds meetups and photography shows and is a true community that’s sprung up around the hashtag. While many professional photographers may have known one another before the advent of Instagram and gained large followings there, there also are many amateur photographers who’ve proved to have an excellent eye and find themselves to be active and popular members of the Instagram NYC community, founded by photographer Brian DiFeo (full disclosure – I moderated a panel that included him at Columbia University’s last Social Media Weekend).
While I don’t think anyone would be able to successfully hijack such a large and vibrant community as #igersnyc – it’s simply too large and spammers would be quickly reported and dealt with, I can see spamming of certain hashtags by people wanting to peddle their wares and not caring about the communities. Much like spammers attack trending topics on Twitter, could this happen on Instagram? Maybe Chirpify has things they do to prevent that from happening. I would hope so. But I do see problems for the lovely communities that have arisen on Instagram.
Maybe I’m being reactionary. Maybe I just have a problem with bringing commerce into Instagram when I haven’t with other platforms because I use it more personally. Maybe this was just my breaking point – does absolutely everything have to be about making money? Especially when it’s not the platform that’s going to be making money off this? Perhaps I’d have less of a problem with this if it were Instagram instituting this as opposed to a third party.
Many other photo apps have sprung up and do what Instagram does, even more attractively – tadaa, EyeEm, TinyPost – if Instagram becomes too commercial, could people begin moving to those platforms?
Or, just maybe, the sky won’t fall and everything will be fine.
9 comments
I am not sure the commerce they create will end up being worth the time of the spammers. I personally do not see Instagram and the Pinterest of Facebook where people go for aspiration and inspiration... and commerce can flourish. I still see Instagram as more about story telling, sharing photos as a sort of timeline and about photography. Time will tell, but think there will be better ways to monetize. Here is a great article by a friend, Mark Boncheck, that very clearly outlines how Facebook can cure their potential advertising scale woes, although not directly related to this post Amy, I think it is relevant... http://adage.com/article/viewpoint/time-facebook-charge-brands-fans/237892/
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@TedRubin Hey Ted! Sorry I missed this comment. I think it got lost in Sandy. :)
I agree that Instagram isn't really about commerce. I wonder if it will be worth the commerce for the users of Chirpify. We shall see.
That's a really interesting article, too, from AdAge. I like it - and it makes sense. So that probably means it won't happen. Thanks for reading!!
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Instagram started dying for me the day Facebook bought it. I still use it but it's not the safe little haven it was for me 2 years ago. It was one place that I really didn't care how many followers, etc there were. Same with Pinterest. One of the main reasons why I'm using Path a little bit more. Until that one gets discovered, too...
@KristenDaukas Path will be OK so long as they don't completely raise limits of how many followers one can have. :)
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It could be worse, it could be Instagram itself trying to monetize by force-feeding adds and promotion on us.
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Amy-
Thanks for your concerns about Chirpify. Working on in-stream eCommerce comes with a lot of internal conversations like this, as we do not want to hijack the web or even one small corner of it. But I'm going to bank that the sky will not fall anytime soon, especially at our doing.
Allow me to start off with a questions I feel are relevant in this argument:
1. By shelling out $1bb to purchase the application, do you believe Facebook had no plans of eventually monetizing the service via their pesky ad manager? My answer? It's coming.
2. Why feel more confident about the service if Facebook built it than a third party? My answer? Don't. The most successful, and honestly effective, social tools on the market right now are all-third parties applications for the core networks. You see more people using Hootsuite than Facebook's Page Manager, people using services like Appbistro to install applications by Wildfire, North Social and Involver on their Facebook page, rather than implement some cookie cutter solution Facebook rolls out. Why? Because these moguls wouldn't get it right, and third-parties NEED to get it right in order to validate developer ecosystems, which is the point of an open API in the first place, no?
3. Will we hijack? Simply put, no. This would imply that we have rights that we do not have. In order to transact fiscally on instagram you have to authorize the application (Chirpify) to launch deals on Instagram. So it's not an unwilling situation, quite the opposite in fact, as you have to choose to partake. Furthermore, with Chirpify, you can choose to connect your Twitter account and your Instagram account or even leave one of the accounts out. It's really at will.
Let's focus on hijacking a little more. We chose Instagram and Twitter because they are not necessarily one-to-one relationships, like facebook. One Facebook you follow a friend and they follow you back. On Twitter and Instagram, you follow and individual because they are relevant to you. By doing so, you give them the OPPORTUNITY to follow you back, but not the necessity. One of the trends both Instagram and Twitter have seen in the last 18 months is that nearly 75% of users follow a brand. Those users follow those brands because nearly 60% of them want deals. So, 100% relevance, 100% choice still implement.
If one of those brands decides "to hell with linking off social media, let's keep these deals in-stream," the users who see that deal directly will be users who follow that. BUT you say spammers will be able to drop in image willy nilly, to which I respond If you search, yes. But again, that is a choice. That is where the real variance here. Anytime you search on the internet, via google, facebook, twitter, etc. there are going to be unpleasant items, some spam, some porn and probably that guy who thinks he's funny but isn't. Nonetheless, that search is a choice, and understanding a spam photo might exist in it.
Fortunately for you, Chirpify verifies in multiple ways: email, social accounts and paypal. You can't have a Chirpify account without those entities, so the amount of noise on our platform is small. Also fortunately, #instagimme, #instasale and #instafund are all tertiary-tier hashtags, due to our research. They aren't communities. They are comments.
So, to sum up why I disagree about the sky falling, I respond:
1. Trust third party apps more, we've created a better experience on the social web with our little apps than Google+ did with their entire platform. We've build tools you use everyday on the big sites- Tweetdeck, Facebook Apps, even little things like payment gateways.
2. Hijacking is unlikely, and if it happens, it's because you choose. Your user-stream, those you follow, those you care about will not change. How you transact with them might, but once again, that is your choice, which at the end of the day fuels Chirpify.
3. Let's chat again when Facebook ads show up in Instagram :)
Despite our disagreement, thanks for writing about us! And let's chat again.
Heath Black, Chirp
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First, I would like to sincerely thank you for your reply. You've provided a great deal of information that is quite helpful.
I also completely agree that, at some point, Facebook is going to start doing something and it probably will be rather ham-handed.
In general, most of your points are valid, but I fear you missed my point about hijacking. It's not Chirpify that I fear will hijack, it's spammers. And while there are many people who follow just the accounts they follow on Instagram, there are huge numbers of people who specifically follow hashtags. Yes, that's a search, but it's a structured search and is part of how Instagram has grown. Those hashtag communities are just that - actual communities.
While you're correct in saying that people who search hashtags are choosing to do so, it's not quite as simple as that. These are really wonderful microcommunities that have sprung up on Instagram. There already are spammers who hijack the hashtags, sure, but the incentive to hijack is much less. With the ability to sell things directly in-stream? It's only going to explode.
Does that mean it shouldn't be done? No, and I'm not saying that, either. And if you read to the very, very end of my piece, I grant that just maybe everything will be just fine. :)
Again, I thank you for your lengthy and valuable reply, Heath! I wish you the best with your business.
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