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"One of the topics that keeps coming up in my office is around exactly what makes Instagram so awesome. \u00A0I mean, photo sharing.... really? \u00A0Wasn\u2019t casual photo sharing won by Facebook, and serious photo sharing won by Flickr? \u00A0And didn\u2019t this happen years ago?\r\n\r\nSo how exactly is it that a pivoting, iPhone only startup has been able to launch in the face of (at least) two behemoth incumbents and rocket to over one million users in two months?\r\n\r\nSome of the theories that we\u2019ve heard thrown around are Instagram\u2019s simplicity, its speed, its feedback loop, its elegant use of location, and the kitschy, throwback use of filters as a self expression tool.\r\n\r\nBut none of this stuff is new. \u00A0Everyone knows that apps are supposed to simple, fast, and social. \u00A0Hipstamatic has been doing the polaroid style photos for a while. \u00A0Facebook is dead simple and fast for taking and sharing photos. \u00A0Gowalla and Foursquare both let you post photos with your checkin. \u00A0The Flickr iPhone app lets you browse and react to your friends\u2019 photos, and take your own. \u00A0\u00A0And there are lots of well funded startups like Path and PicPlz out there as well.\r\n\r\nInstagram\u2019s magic seems to lie a bit deeper. \u00A0In talking to friends of mine who are Instagram addicts, one trait seems to be coming up over and over again. \u00A0Most of them did not consider themselves serious photographers pre Instagram (by serious photographers, I mean people that would deliberately go out of the way to capture a special shot).\r\n\r\nNot the case now. \u00A0Now my friends are pulling their cars over and putting themselves in otherwise dangerous situations to capture the perfect shot.\r\n\r\nSomehow, it seems that Instagram is able to bring out the photographer in people that had never considered themselves photographers before.\r\n\r\nPut another way, many of us didn't know we needed or wanted an app like Instagram. \u00A0The lack of a better tool for photographic self expression was not a problem for which we needed a solution. \u00A0\u00A0Yet Instagram has managed to change our behavior\u00A0 in a very short period of time.\r\n\r\nAlso interesting is that the shots that people seem to post to Instagram - graffiti, flying pigeons, stuff around the neighborhood - are not the kind of photos you see on Facebook. Instagram has created a new niche - making photographers out of people who were not photographers before.\r\n\r\nWhich brings me to what this all means for Facebook. \u00A0Pre Instagram, I would have considered Facebook to be invincible when it comes to social photo sharing. \u00A0They have the social graph and built in audience, they have a wonderful iPhone app for sharing photos, and they have the installed base. \u00A0Only a desperate, pivoting startup like Instagram would dare take on the 500M user strong Facebook right smack in its wheelhouse.\r\n\r\nAnd it\u2019s not just photos where Facebook is facing Instagram style insurgencies; it\u2019s, location, events, college campuses, QA, profile pages, and even in the newsfeed itself. \u00A0In some of these verticals Facebook is the incumbent, and in some they are the fast follower. \u00A0But in virtually every vertical and for every Facebook feature, you can find micro services \u00A0that are doing a slightly better job.\r\n\r\nAs we enter 2011, the Facebook behemoth would seem to be firing on all cylinders. \u00A0But breathe deeply my entrepreneurial friends. \u00A0Services like Instagram and Plancast and Tumblr and Foursquare and Twitter and Quora and Yelp are proving that there is still plenty of oxygen left for those with good ideas, and better execution.\r\n\r\nThe next big contender in social networking / social media may not be a single company at all. \u00A0Rather, it may be a thousand companies, each focused in purpose, and each able to provide a slightly better experience than the generic social network."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/insider/2010/12/30/more-on-instagram-or-why-facebook-hasnt-won-everything/>