It seems like every time that a startup gets bought and internalized to some proprietary system or network, it opens up the market for another startup in that same exact space.
Is anyone trying to fill in the hole that instagram will leave?
That would seem to make sense. Personally I think this sheds a bit of light on the question as to why Facebook would pay a billion dollars[1] for Instagram. Rather than solidifying its place as the premier "real time news feeder of a certain size" Twitter is off spending its time re-creating a service that a lot of its customers really value. By throwing that wrench into Twitter's way, Facebook gives itself and others time to grow in this space.
[1] We've debated the death the 'value' of this deal which was half stock (which tanked) and half cash. But for the purposes of this point it was a 'big chunk of change' for the newly public Facebook.
I'm baffled as to how spending one billion dollars for the purpose of denying an easily-replicated feature to a non-profitable competitor can be a plausible explanation of Facebook's strategy.
That's pretty annoying, actually, but it's a good example of what can happen when these services (used by millions of people) change hands.
On a related note, Cinemagr.am, which I find pretty interesting, should also focus more on their own website instead of relying completely on Twitter, Facebook and iOS/Android apps...
The first photo they have on their website is rather irritating. Being able to see the sidewalk moving up and down kind of ruins the effect. I'm surprised they didn't pick a better example for their own website.
Hopefully I am wrong but this could become symbolic of self-inflicted pain by a company.
Here's my reading:
(1) Twitter started off by pissing off its API users.
(2) Instagram, a company that is by most means excelling because of a great product and focus, takes the bait from Twitter and runs all over its own users and compromises its core principle by making their product shittier. Instagram thinks significantly fewer pictures will be shared on twitter overall as a result--a risky assumption.
(3) Twitter rolls out its own photo effect service and gets to be seen as the nice kid on the block. Meanwhile, Instagram Corp. remains confident Twitter's own feature can't touch its engagement though objectively, this may be a risky bet.
(4) app.net jumps in telling the Valley "TOLD YALL!"
Exactly. It'd be one thing if instagram was a popular independent service. But they're not. Let's not forget who their big brother is, peering over their shoulder.
I'm neither convinced that Twitter would have any interest in creating an Instagram clone (their recent behavior seems to indicate they're more interested in being a media distribution platform for brands than a venue for personal expression), nor that there is any reason to believe its chance of success would be any greater than that of a complete newcomer to the space.
> app.net jumps in telling the Valley "TOLD YALL!"
Haha, ever since this story broke, I've been waiting with bated breath for a post by Dalton about how this is another sign that Twitter is "pivoting" or how users are going to get tired of not being the customers.
Dalton isn't incorrect or lying when he suggests that users are getting tired. However, the core question for his business is at what rate are users getting tired? And is the rate accelerating? So far, I don't see this nuanced conversation and yet, the entire App.net argument hinges upon it.
I'm not saying that he's incorrect or lying, I'm just saying that he sounds a tad pretentious every time he makes one of those posts.
> the core question for his business is at what rate are users getting tired?
Right, and tired enough to pay $5 for a one-month subscription to App.net. And the fact that App.net offers only Stripe for payment doesn't help things. Neither does the branding problem that App.net has - for the average person, it's difficult to understand what exactly it does. It's more powerful to have a social networking platform than a specific site, for sure, and I immediately appreciated its value when I heard about it. But I don't think most of my non-tech savvy friends could or would.
One thing that Instagram is missing with this whole web focus is a login feature on their homepage. After looking around, there's a Your Account feature in the footer text. Not very obvious.
There was never a time it want about the money. The startup game in SV isn't much different than high-stakes poker in Vegas: sure, the game may be fun and certainly takes skill, but, in the end, it's about coming out on top and that is measured in dollars.
This is really interesting-
A friend of mine and I have just submitted an app to Apple last friday which allows you to view your twitter streams / twitter searches / etc but only shows tweets with photos. It's looking at the links in the tweets for media, and not the media entities themselves, so it looks like our app will still function correctly (just now tested)! We started making this app before the api 1.1 debacle so I'm interested to see how it'll play out.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 71.5 ms ] threadIs anyone trying to fill in the hole that instagram will leave?
Twitter's photo system effectively already did.
http://allthingsd.com/20121208/twitter-aims-to-release-photo...
[1] We've debated the death the 'value' of this deal which was half stock (which tanked) and half cash. But for the purposes of this point it was a 'big chunk of change' for the newly public Facebook.
On a related note, Cinemagr.am, which I find pretty interesting, should also focus more on their own website instead of relying completely on Twitter, Facebook and iOS/Android apps...
Here's my reading:
(1) Twitter started off by pissing off its API users.
(2) Instagram, a company that is by most means excelling because of a great product and focus, takes the bait from Twitter and runs all over its own users and compromises its core principle by making their product shittier. Instagram thinks significantly fewer pictures will be shared on twitter overall as a result--a risky assumption.
(3) Twitter rolls out its own photo effect service and gets to be seen as the nice kid on the block. Meanwhile, Instagram Corp. remains confident Twitter's own feature can't touch its engagement though objectively, this may be a risky bet.
(4) app.net jumps in telling the Valley "TOLD YALL!"
Haha, ever since this story broke, I've been waiting with bated breath for a post by Dalton about how this is another sign that Twitter is "pivoting" or how users are going to get tired of not being the customers.
> the core question for his business is at what rate are users getting tired?
Right, and tired enough to pay $5 for a one-month subscription to App.net. And the fact that App.net offers only Stripe for payment doesn't help things. Neither does the branding problem that App.net has - for the average person, it's difficult to understand what exactly it does. It's more powerful to have a social networking platform than a specific site, for sure, and I immediately appreciated its value when I heard about it. But I don't think most of my non-tech savvy friends could or would.