This week I did something that I hadn’t done for five months and 12 days: I went to Flickr on my laptop, accessed some photos on my hard drive, uploaded them, named them, tagged them, and organized them in a set.

The magic of the Internet happened before my eyes, and they joined the other rectangular images on the venerable photo-sharing site. And finally, for the first time in almost half a year, I had something beside square pics on my Flickr photostream.

Yahoo announced its massive revamp of the Flickr service with three missing Es, calling the updated site Biggr, Spectaculr, and Wherevr. But really, the update boils down to two massive changes: Dropping freemium and making an old and tired user interface awesome.

Since I was just wondering about reupping my Pro account, the first is really significant.

Yahoo’s giving each Flickr user a full terabyte of space for images for free, which essentially means you don’t need to be a Pro user anymore. You still can, for an ad-free account, or to add even more space … but I don’t mind a few ads, and I’m only using 0.8 percent of my freely available terabyte anyways.

But the best and most important is the incredible new look.

There’s varied response to the new look, to say the least, and the official forum thread on the new layout has a staggering 241 pages of user comments: 24,102 in total so far. The vast majority of them are negative, and most of those appear to be from long-time users who liked the site the way it was and are asking Flickr to change it back.

Good luck.

Flickr as it was was turning into a byway, a leftover, and an also-ran. Which is why most of the pics on my photostream and home page were square: They were exports, shares from Instagram photos. In other words, Flickr was changing from the place where you went to share photos from, to the place where you shared photos to. That may be a small change in the English language, but it’s a massive change in user engagement.

And it had huge effects on Flickr’s traffic, which dropped about 40 percent in the last year alone:

The new look is gorgeous and photo-centric, giving photos — the raison d’etre of Flickr — center stage.

Sure, it’s Pinterest-ic and Tumblr-y. But if you love images and imagery, the new Flickr displays photos immeasurably better that the previous iteration. In a funny modern way, your digital photostream now resembles an old-fashioned photography album, without any cheesy in-your-face design elements attempting to highlight the fact.

In addition, the new layout options gave Yahoo the option of displaying images with much more creativity while honoring the photographer’s shot selection — such as Flickr displaying panorama shots across the entire page:

I’m sold. Flickr, I’m back.

“I think Flickr is awesome again with these new announcements,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said. “Photos make the world go around. Flickr was awesome once. It languished. But now it’s awesome again.”

I agree. And so does one of the more famous photographers on Flickr, Thomas Hawk:

despite all of the naysayers about the new @flickr, my page has never had more engagement than it has there in the last 3 days.

— Thomas Hawk (@thomashawk) May 23, 2013

Image credits: John Koetsier

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Tumblr wants more.

The popular and fast-growing blog service is mulling a $1.1 billion acquisition offer from Yahoo. But while the massive blogging powerhouse only pulled in $13 million in revenue in 2012, and raised $125 million at a lower $800 million valuation, Tumblr CEO David Karp feels $1.1 billion is too little.

I guess it depends what yardstick you use.

If you look at an Instagram-style deal, which was originally around a billion dollars but eventually, due to Facebook’s stock market woes, came in a little lower, he might be right. But that deal had one thing going for it that Tumblr does not.

Instagram chief executive and co-founder Kevin Systrom had multiple suitors, while Tumblr only has one.

That’s because, as Forbes reveals, Yahoo is currently negotiating under a lockup. So even though Facebook, Microsoft, and potentially other acquirers are interested, Yahoo has at least a period of time in which it is the only one on the dance card.

In addition Tumblr, which famously hates advertising and only started trying to make money after five years in existence, is in a bit of a pickle, as its $125 million in funding is running out, giving the service only a few-month window in which to raise a new round or find a sugar daddy.

That’s likely a strategic error on Karp’s part, who has said that advertising “really turns our stomachs.”

Tumblr only started to get serious about ad revenue in mid-2012, and is only planning to roll out its third major ad product — pay per view, in which you pay to get others to view — sometime later this year. Being more aggressive on monetization would have given Tumblr more runway to make a leisurely decision about an acquisition, or made the company more attractive to investors if it tried to raise another funding round.

There’s no question, however, that Tumblr is a traffic powerhouse. It ranks ninth on the list of most-popular U.S sites, and with 217 million global monthly unique visitors and 74 million million posts each and every day, the site is both huge and fast-growing. Few companies could monetize its 108 million blogs, 51 billion posts, and 16 billion monthly pageviews as well as Yahoo.

So while Yahoo is likely to come up a little, Karp could pick worse partners. And he might do well to finalize a deal sooner rather than later.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

This sponsored post is produced by StackSocial.

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Clearly, however, not anymore.

“Seventy-one percent of consumers say they post hashtags from their mobile devices,” RadiumOne VP Kamal Kaur told me yesterday. “I’ve even caught myself hashtagging in my emails.”

Hashtags help communicate ideas and feelings, the 500-person study says, help Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest users redirect their friends and followers to related content and help unrelated people participate in a larger social conversation. The hashtag was born in strictly geeky circumstances on IRC (Internet Relay Chat, a form of group messaging that arose in 1988) and made its way to Twitter in 2007 with now-Google employee Chris Messina’s tweet:

how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?

— Chris Messina™ (@chrismessina) August 23, 2007

But with almost three quarters of this study’s respondents — 70 percent of whom were women, and 44 percent of whom were middle-aged — using hashtags, they’re definitely not something that’s confined to young, geeky, and, shall we say it, male culture.

Interestingly, social media users seem to use hashtags much more preferentially on mobile devices than on laptops or desktops, something that may be due to the built-in capabilities for doing so in many social media apps, Kaur said. Of respondents who say they use hashtags, 70.5 percent used them mainly on mobile, and 29.5 percent used them mainly on their desktop device.

Perhaps the reason for the high use is, simply, that they work.

“Fifty percent of respondents said they would explore new content through hashtags,” Kaur said. “People even use hashtags in Facebook, even though you can’t search by them yet there.”

People who see a hashtag tend to click on it, explore it, use it in their own posts, or even check out the person or brand that tweeted it. That’s something that people who want to share their content more widely, including online marketers, should keep in mind.

photo credit: mikecogh via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

A company called Socialmatic recently announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the company that licenses the Polaroid trademark to create a digital version of the Polaroid camera that looks suspiciously exactly like the Instagram app icon.

The company says, somewhat optimistically given that it has nothing beyond a very sexy rendering, that it hopes to begin production in 2014. Between then and now it will need to proceed beyond the MoU to an actual contract, come up with some specs, design the product’s electronics, find a manufacturer, figure out a way to sell it, get deals with retailers of some kind, somehow get it into customers’ hands, and pray that it actually works. Oh yes, and it will probably also need to strike some sort of licensing agreement with Facebook, given how similar its concept is to the Instagram icon (right).

To which we say: Design manufacture legal blah blah blah. WANT.

Update March 5: An Instagram representative contacted me after reading this article with the following statement: ”This is not an Instagram camera and we have no affiliation with Socialmatic.” So my guess is that you can probably forget about actually seeing this camera in 2014.

Via ReadWrite

Curalate released a visual analytics product today to answer that question — the first analytics solution to consolidate both Instagram and Pinterest reports in a single dashboard.

“Images drive emotions with an immediacy that no other medium offers,” Apu Gupta, Curalate’s CEO and co-founder said in a statement. ”We’re helping brands see the bigger picture — to engage audiences across networks based on what’s most relevant rather than what’s most recent.”

Curalate’s solution will allow companies to see which images are most popular, merge customer conversations about their images on both visual social networks together, and create promotions for Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook simultaneously. In addition, Curalate will help brands distinguish between engagement with content that fans have posted and content that the brands themselves have posted.

Analytics for social media networks are superhot right now.

Offerpop just released a new Facebook analytics solution, as did ePrize, and Pinfluencer introduced a very sophisticated image-searching solution for Pinterest a week ago. Curalate’s solution also uses image recognition algorithms to identify shared images.

Curulate says that customers like HGTV, Nine West, and designer Michael Kors use the solution.

This sponsored post is produced by StackSocial.

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Popular photo-sharing service Instagram has finally brought feeds of filtered photos from mobile apps to the web.

Facebook-owned Instagram has focused on a “mobile first” strategy for two years as it has gathered more than 100 million users. But now the service finally is making it possible to get most of the Instagram experience (minus the photo-taking) on the web, following its decision to open up web-based profiles in November.

Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom writes in a blog post:

Today, I’m very excited to announce the launch of a product we’ve been wanting to build for quite some time now. Since our launch in October of 2010, we’ve focused on building a simple app that has inspired creativity while capturing everyday moments through the lens of your mobile phone. In fact, our focus on building out a mobile-only experience is a unique path that we’ve chosen for many reasons, most important of which is that Instagram, at its core, is about seeing and taking photos on-the-go.

However, to make Instagram even more accessible to our growing community, at the end of last year we started to expand to the desktop web, giving you the ability to see profiles from instagram.com. To continue that path, as of today, you can now browse your Instagram feed on the web – just like you do on your mobile device..

To access your feed of Instagram photos on the web, just go to Instagram.com and log in. As you can see from my photo above, you can see the picture in large detail in you browser. You can also like the photos or leave comments.

Scrolling through the feed on the web and interacting with content there seems to be another way for Instagram to keep people interested in what their friends are sharing. Phone dead or unable to see that photo well? Just check your feed on the web.

Another reason to make Instagram more accessible? Instagram wants its members on it every day. The company has been accused of losing up to 25 percent of its daily users in recent months. Instagram hasn’t exactly denied those questionable stats, but it did release a monthly user count. As of mid-January, the service had 90 million monthly active users who upload an average of 40 million photos per day.

While there are several features in the web feed, you can’t upload photos there. Systrom says Instagram does not intend to add photo-sharing from the web because he wants the service to be about photos from “the real world.” He writes:

We believe that you should be able to access Instagram on a variety of different devices, any of which may be convenient to you at a given moment – including your desktop computer or tablet. We do not offer the ability to upload from the web as Instagram is about producing photos on the go, in the real world, in realtime. On the other hand, Instagram for the web is focused on making the browsing experience a fast, simple and enjoyable one.

Will you use the Instagram feed on the web?

Leading VOIP and cheap call provider Rebtel asked 1,632 American adults what effects social networks had on them. In a classic can’t-live-with-it, can’t-live-without-it scenario, almost 20 percent of American adults said Facebook was the social network that has the “most negative effect” on their mood, and another 20 percent said it caused them the most stress.

However, Facebook is also the site that almost half of Americans said was the most positive.

In other words, Facebook is such a big part of our lives that our experience of the site pretty much mirrors our experience of life: sometimes our friends piss us off, sometimes they make us sad, but more often, they make us happy.

One thing that’s almost guaranteed to drive your friends nuts? Including them in status updates and location check-ins. 45 percent of us don’t like it when we appear in social media updates that others create, and 70 percent say that’s because they don’t like to broadcast their location.

LinkedIn, Twitter, and Youtube caused almost no stress, as did MySpace. In MySpace’s case, of course, that’s because no-one actually uses the site anymore. But the social media site that are the most positive are Instagram and Pinterest, with only .3 percent and .1 percent, respectively, saying they were stressed out by those services.

One other interesting data point the Rebtel survey highlighted is how social media makes us feel.

On days when we check into social accounts more frequently than normal, we’re typically bored. Of course … that might be the  reason we’re checking in in the first place. But on days when we’re checking in less frequently than normal, we’re typically feeling left out, like we’re missing out on something.

In other words, we’re addicted.

photo credit: Amir Kuckovic via photopin cc

To silence reporters and critics who cried fowl over Instagram’s recent terms of service changes, Instagram has released some traffic analytics for the first time in the service’s history.

Instagram royally pissed off its users back in December because it altered its terms of service to imply that the Facebook-owned service could sell photos that were uploaded without getting permission, or use them for third-party advertising. Furthermore, the new terms forced users to enter into arbitration to settle legal disputes, thus waiving any right to sue Instagram (something that sparked at least one class-action lawsuit). The photo service later recanted on its decision to change the terms of service in a response to the public outcry, but the damage was already done.

That user backlash supposedly caused Instagram usage to decline, as VentureBeat’s Sean Ludwing previously pointed out. A report from research firm AppData, which tracks Instagram’s daily active users, said the service may have lost up to 25 percent of its user base after the terms of service change.

But now Instagram states that it has experienced growth rather than any decline. The service brings in 90 million monthly active users (MAU) and sees an average of 40 million photo uploads per day, the company says. It also reports having 8,500 Facebook “Likes” per second and over 1,000 photo comments per second.

One thing absent from the numbers is a daily active user count. It’s likely the service doesn’t want to release that number because it could give credibility to those who previously tracked Instagram’s day-to-day decline.

Via AllThingsD

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Polaroid is “liberating” your photos from the “confines of their digital devices” by opening 10 retail stores in 2013 called FotoBars, where you can edit and print your images.

It’s painful to hear an old photography company that is attempting to revitalize itself call photo printing stores “cool and hip,” but the premise actually sounds both cool and hip. You’ll be able to upload photos to Polaroid’s workstations, which from the image look to be Apple computers, from your smartphone, camera, or social networks. From there, you edit the photos and add filters if the photo doesn’t already come from Instagram. Once you’re done, you can choose a material to print on and a frame (if you want one), and Polaroid will ship you the image within in a few days.

The stores offer a few different options for materials to print on, including wood, bamboo, meta, acrylic, and canvas. Or, you know, you can just get a regularly printed photo. Polaroid says a “critical aspect of the customer experience” is being able to touch and play with examples of all of these materials.

If you’re stuck or want to learn something new, each shop will have “Phototenders” to help you through the process. Each also has “The Studio” where you can host parties or partake in a photo-editing class.

The first of these stores will appear in Delray Beach, Fla. and opens in February. Further stores will open around the U.S. through the year, including in New York, Las Vegas, and Boston.

Polaroid stresses that it wants these photos to finally be works of art, outside of your devices. Chief executive Scott W. Hardy said in a statement:

“Unfortunately, even the very best of those pictures rarely ever escape the camera phone with which they were taken to be put on display around our homes and offices. Why? Because turning those pictures into something tangible, creative, and permanent is neither easy nor fun. Polaroid Fotobar stores are going to change all of that.”

hat tip The Next Web; Fotobar image via Polaroid

Photo sharing social network Instagram has created a new site in anticipation for the loads of photos people will be taking during their New Year’s Eve celebrations tonight.

It’s a smart move for the social network, as people who don’t normally bother looking at Instagram photos en-mass will probably enjoy seeing the various NYE celebrations as they bring in 2013 across the globe.

Via Instagram’s blog:

“At instagram.com/nye, you can see photos from every part of the world as the clock strikes midnight in a given timezone. Use the navigation at the bottom to hop from one city to another. You’ll be able to see photos from cities like Auckland that are already celebrating, and as the day goes on you’ll see photos from everywhere else in the world. Hover over the photo to see who posted it and click on it to go to the photo page, where you can like and comment.”

The service saw a huge influx of uploads at the beginning of the holiday season, with Thanksgiving seeing a new upload record. Christmas, however, wasn’t as popular, with a number of Instagram users still upset over the short-lived terms of service changes.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

2012 has been an amazing year in technology.

We’ve seen the clash of titans in mobile as Apple, Google, and Microsoft have released new phones, tablets, and mobile operating systems. We’ve seen a single network connect over a billion people worldwide. We’ve seen the once-great mobile company of the far European north forced to hawk its headquarters to raise cash. And we’ve seen social media move from cutting-edge to mainstream as the Obama campaign celebrated four more years.

In every year, we see winners and losers: companies, devices, or operating systems. Here’s our look at some of the biggest successes and failures of 2012.

The winners

	Android What more can you say about Android? With 75 percent market share in the third quarter of 2012, the free mobile operating system from Google looks poised to take over the world.
	Samsung  Not many companies sell 55 million smartphones in a quarter. Samsung did, and it will probably do it again.
	Galaxy S III Samsung is hot in large part due to its top smartphone, the Galaxy S III. With over 18 million units shipped in the third quarter, and 30 million shipped in five months, it’s easy to see why.
	iPhone 5 Sure, it was Time’s gadget of the year. But more importantly, iPhone 5 catapulted Apple back into the smartphone leadership position, at least in the U.S.
	iPad Mini We called it immediately: light, portable, awesome, and expensive. And it even looked better up close and person in our review. But we had no clue it would become one of Apple’s best-selling iPads. And now that it’s probably going Retina in April/May, it’s just getting better.
	YouTube YouTube continues to be the online leader, by far, in online video with 800 million visitors and billion-view channels created by individuals and brands. Despite getting the boot from iOS6, YouTube just continues to grow, with 25 times the video streams of its nearest competitor.
	Twitter 2012 is the year that Twitter went mainstream, reaching 500 million users mid-summer and just recently announcing 200 million monthly active users. And despite major new API restrictions that soured its relationship with developers, a very public spat with Instagram, and an evolving shift from social utility to media company, the company continues to grow and solidify its space in fast-breaking news.
	Instagram With a sale initially priced at almost $1.3 billion and an exploding user count, not even a tone-deaf terms-of-service change that spurred a class action lawsuit and a possible exodus of some users can keep Instagram off our winner list.
	Google Android is hot — 75 percent market-share hot. Search is still a massive strength for the iconic company that runs an ad 30 billion times each and every day. And so Google makes over $100 million a day – and hits our list of hot companies in 2012.
	ARM With the vast majority of the chips in smartphones running ARM processors, ARM has people wondering whether the mobile juggernaut will challenge Intel for CPU dominance. That’s still a stretch, but not nearly what it was just a few years ago.
	Reddit With 3.8 billion page views and 46 million unique visitors in October — double the previous year’s numbers — Reddit is continuing its torrid growth. And it doesn’t hurt when the POTUS himself chooses your site to do an informal meet-the-people session — which required 60 dedicated servers.

Next page: The losers

Pages: 1 2 3

Updated at 8:57 a.m Pacific time with more details about AppData’s tracking.

Instagram may have lost about 25 percent of its daily active users since people started revolting over a questionable terms of service change, according to tracking from AppData.

On Dec. 17, Instagram changed its terms of service to make way for advertising, but it wrote it in a way that users interpreted as a plan to sell their photos. Naturally, users were upset, and many even threatened to quit using to photo service. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom quickly retracted the changes, saying, “It is not our intention to sell your photos.”

The Facebook-owned photo-sharing service, which is one of the most popular apps across mobile devices, dropped from 16.4 million daily users the week the terms of service changes debuted to 12.4 million users this week, according to AppData’s metrics. It’s worth noting that AppData only measures Instagram use of people who have connected their Instagram account with Facebook. While that’s still a fair amount of users being tracked, it certainly doesn’t measure all Instagram activity.

“[We are] pretty sure the decline in Instagram users was due to the terms of service announcement,” AppData told The New York Post.

Instagram denies that a decline in users has actually happened. “This data is inaccurate,” Instagram said in a widely circulated statement. “We continue to see strong and steady growth in both registered and active users of Instagram.”

Both Quartz and The Next Web also argue that the report is bogus, but it’s hard to say that AppData is completely off. Instagram uploads hit an all-time high on Thanksgiving this year, so it’s weird that the service wouldn’t have experienced similar bump in uploads during Christmas. It’s also weird that Instagram would have experienced a decline in usage on Christmas, too.

One other reason to potentially take AppData’s info with a grain of salt: Weekly active users and monthly active users continue to rise for Instagram. AppData’s latest monthly active user count for Instagram sits at 43.6 million users, while the weekly active users number sit at 29.4 million.

Notably, prolific Instagram user Kim Kardashian (pictured), who has 5.8 million followers, has not posted a photo of herself on the service since the privacy debacle. Her reaction could indicate that celebs may be questioning their Instagram use and are becoming less willing to post pictures of themselves as well.

Instagram was acquired by Facebook earlier this year in a deal worth $715 million. Facebook’s stock is currently down 2.5 percent, which is likely due to the Instagram news as well as uncertainly over the “fiscal cliff.”

Kim Kardashian via Instagram

Last week’s terms of service change by social photo sharing site Instagram has caused at least one user to lash out with more than just words — she’s taking her protest to court.

Reuters first caught wind of the legal battle today, but the suit itself was filed in a San Francisco federal court on Friday by a California Instagram user Lucy Funes. It’s also a proposed  class-action suit by law firm Finkelstein & Krinsk, which means that several of Instagram’s users can participate if the case goes through.

Instagram upset its users last week because it altered its terms of service to imply that the Facebook-owned service could sell photos that were uploaded without getting permission or use them for third-party advertising. Furthermore, the new terms forced users to enter into arbitration to settle legal disputes, thus waiving any right to sue Instagram. Of course, Instagram later recanted on its decision to change the terms of service in a response to the public outcry, but the damage was already done.

Facebook went through a number of growing pains when it began maneuvering to monetize user activity. For Instagram, it’s probably a bit different considering that the service was more in-tune with Twitter, which has a history of declaring that its users own their activity, until it was purchased by Facebook earlier this year.

Ending a rocky week on a high note, Instagram released new versions of its applications for iPhone and Android. The Facebook-owned photo-sharing property added and improved support for 25 languages and unveiled a spiffy new filter called Mayfair.

Instagram for iPhone version 3.4.1 and Instagram for Android version 3.4 now allow for 25 language translations including Danish, Japanese, Korean, Greek, and German. Both applications also include Mayfair, a filter with a thin black border, “warm pink tone,” and “subtle vignetting that brightens the center of the photograph.”

The Instagram for iPhone application also received a few additional tweaks such as native Facebook integration for iOS 6 users, the option to select photos from albums other than the device’s camera roll, and a bunch of bug fixes.

The Android application, meanwhile, just got super brand-friendly. Now, Facebook Page moderators can connect their accounts to Instagram and share directly from the Android application to their brand page.

The updates, particularly the new filter and Page support, may help partially appease Instagram users who were more than a little displeased when Instagram changed its terms of service earlier this week. The photo-sharing app has since backtracked, but some users likely still view the app and its eventual plans to monetization with trepidation.

Photo credit: maaco/Flickr

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It’s time to take back our social networks.

It’s time, because the networks we rely on have been gradually making it clearer and clearer that we are not in control. What they mean by sharing is not what the web used to mean by sharing.

Facebook recently updated its terms of service, removing a sham user voting policy that it had in place for a few years. It also updated the terms of service for Instagram, giving itself the right to sell your location and other data to advertisers — and even to feature your photos in advertisements, although it subsequently removed that clause.

Meanwhile, Twitter is steadily restricting the ways you can use tweets. While the company did just start letting people download an archive of all their tweets, it’s increasingly resistant to letting you do anything else with your data, such as integrate it with services like If This Then That.

So, fine: These companies are entitled to run themselves the way they want, and you can participate or not, as you choose.

But I want to suggest a third way, which leaves you in control of your own stuff.

It’s called blogging.

That’s a bit of a retro suggestion, because blogs have taken a back seat to other forms of expression in the past few years. The RSS feed never engendered the kind of reciprocal sharing and commenting that a well-designed social network does, and as a result, many people have migrated away from blogging.

“I’ve used many social networks. Friendster, Facebook, everything. But they come and go. But my blog has always been my home on the web,” Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, told me last week. ”What’s changed in the past few years is that blogging started to feel a bit more lonely, because it wasn’t connected to these social news feeds.”

Like Mullenweg, those of us who have had blogs for a decade or more have been using them less and less, drawn to the ease of tweeting and the warm, friendly responsiveness of Facebook.

But now it’s possible to circle back to the blog without giving up the social networks. In fact, it’s increasingly easy to use a blog as the center of your social universe.

That’s because, while social networks like Facebook and Twitter are reluctant to share data out, they are eager to bring your data in. (This is why Twitter no longer lets you update your LinkedIn status from Twitter, but you can do the reverse and update your Twitter status from LinkedIn.)

So if they won’t share, fine: Make your own website the source, and share it out to various other networks as a way of staying in touch with your friends there.

If you’re a WordPress user, a feature called Publicize makes this super-simple. (It’s built in to WordPress.com, and for people who host their own blogs using the open-source WordPress.org code, Publicize is now available through the Jetpack plugin.) With Publicize, you connect your blog to the social services you want to update: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. You may also connect it to Yahoo’s profile updates, but I don’t know anyone who uses those. It doesn’t have Google+ integration, a minor downside if you are one of the few who uses Google+. Once connected, every post you publish on your blog posts to the social networks you chose.

This, I’ve found, creates a subtle shift in the way I think about blogging. Blog posts are more integrated into my social networks — plural — and in turn, my social networks are tied into the posts I write.

Sure, I’ll still get @ replies on Twitter and comments on Facebook, and I’ll still post short updates that are unique to those networks. But with this setup, I’m less dependent on any one social network.

If I get tired of one network — say, Instagram pisses me off with a terms of service update — it’s far easier for me to relocate somewhere else, like Yahoo’s long-disused Flickr service, which just added a new iOS app that has its own Instagram-like photo filters. (It’s easy to post photos from Flickr onto a WordPress blog, and from there to your social networks, but going the other direction — from blog to Flickr — is trickier, probably because Flickr isn’t tied in to those Yahoo updates I mentioned above.)

Flickr, by the way, has been sending me a flood of notifications about new people following me, something I haven’t seen in several years on the service. I’m not the only one to notice this. Apparently, its new app has caught people’s eyes.

Bringing blogs and social networks together is exactly what the makers of WordPress were thinking with the Publicize add-on.

“We found that when we hooked them up, you can have the best of both worlds,” Mullenweg told me. “We’ve been trying to just close that loop.”

WordPress has more clout than you might think: According to at least one estimate, it powers 17.5 percent of the world’s websites. (That includes VentureBeat, which runs on WordPress.com, as well as my personal blogs.) And it’s an open-source system, not controlled by any one company, and not beholden to advertisers or data miners or other interests.

If the WordPress plan works, more people may return to blogging, not just as a form of self-expression but as a way of organizing their online social lives. As that happens, it might — just maybe — encourage a slightly longer attention span than you can manage with 140 characters.

“WordPress users are some of the most savvy users on the web,” Mullenweg told me. “They have accounts everywhere. They already have a Facebook and a Tumblr and so forth. So it’s a challenge to provide something different, something that’s geared more toward longer-form content, rather than something that’s a distraction, that you check while you’re busy.”

Imagine that. Along with owning our own words, we might actually start to think a little more deeply about them, too.

Photo credit: Vicki’s Pics via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom released a blog post today clarifying some big questions users had after the photo sharing app updated its terms of service with questionable content.

Over the past 24 hours, reports of people dropping the app as a result of terminology in the TOS have spread across the Internet. The terminology led people to believe that their photos could be used in advertisements or be sold to advertisers. Systrom clarified:

“It was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear.”

Some had the idea that Instagram would use people’s photos similar to the way Facebook uses profile pictures in Sponsored Stories. Instagram says it will not use photos in this manner, and it is striking the verbiage that suggests this from its terms of service.

“The language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement,” Systrom wrote. “We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question.”

The corresponding section of the proposed terms of service previously read:

“To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.”

This paragraph is no longer available under the terms of service, as promised.

The company reassured its users that it doesn’t want banner advertisements in its app either, saying that it wants to come up with more innovative solutions. This sounds similar to its new owner Facebook, which has started to incorporate different advertisements into the news feed. Instagram also mimics its parent company in saying it wants to use people’s data to promote businesses.

For instance, your information such as profile picture and the fact that you liked a business’ page “might show up if you are following this business” in a promotion on Instagram.

Systrom ends the post saying that your privacy settings will not change — if only your friends can see your photos, then only your friends will see your photos — and that we can expect more updates soon. This likely means that the company is going to send out a revised version of its terms of service with the changes highlighted above.

Kevin Systrom image via LeWEB12/Flickr

So, you’re pissed at Instagram. The photo-sharing app announced yesterday that it is completing its transition into Facebook by updating its terms of service to give the social network access to its (your) data.

Well, Instagram has heard your outrage.

The company tweeted, “We’ve heard you that the updates to our Privacy Policy & Terms of Service are raising a lot of questions. We’ll have more to share very soon.”

This isn’t a promise that Instagram will change its Terms of Service having listened to your feedback. It might just mean that it will clear up some confusion surrounding the changes, including whether or not your photos will be used in advertisements without your permission.

As we always note with Facebook privacy changes, in the Facebook world your data still belongs to you, but by signing up, you’ve already given the social network rights to use your data. “Asking first” isn’t necessary because they already asked you, and you already agreed. Instagram, on the other hand, didn’t always operate under this shield, and thus it is getting heat from its community.

But it seems people from within Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s own circle are coming out against the changes as well. The CEO’s wedding photographer is unhappy with the changes, posting about her discontent (like many others) on Instagram itself. She writes:

Instagram is fun. I just started posting again and was enjoying it greatly. But this section of the TOS must change. I make a living taking and making photographs. Sometimes advertising photography. I have also appeared in advertising as an actor. My name, face and photographs are not only valuable but my livelihood. You can not take those things from me for free. The solution is pretty simple. If you want to use me or my work all you have to do is ask first. We can take it from there. If not, I have to leave, and a lot of friends are coming with.

Zuckerberg’s sister Arielle added her two cents in a much smaller way by “liking” a photo of Instagram’s new TOS that had the caption, “Instagram’s suicide note,” as caught by CNET.

Heart image via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Instagram, what are we gonna do with you? First you sell out to the largest social network on earth, and now you want to sell us out to advertisers.

Not cool, bro. Not even remotely cool.

Fortunately for us, we’re onto your capitalistic machinations, and we’ve got a few tricks of our own.

Here, dear reader, are a few Instagram alternatives that are open-source enough for you to be certain your photos, locations, and web browsing data will never be used against you.

Anypic

Anypic is a sweet little app from Parse, a Y Combinator-incubated company we’ve written about quite a bit in the past. You can log in with Facebook; it lets you capture and share images with your friends from inside a slick, Instagram-like user interface.

Best of all, you can download the source code and create your own version (aka “fork”) of the Anypic code, if you’re so inclined. Parse built the app as proof-of-concept for its product, a mobile platform, so it’s not at all interested in making money from end users based on their private data.

Fork it: GitHub repo

VintageJS

VintageJS is a desktop-based tool for adding retro filters to your photos. It uses some nifty HTML5 canvas tricks to make the whole thing work. You can adjust the vignetting, add blur effects, switch up the color curves, and more, all with simple one-click buttons. VintageJS also has its own built-in sharing tools for Facebook and Twitter.

Fork it: GitHub repo

OpenPhoto

OpenPhoto’s iPhone app brings you photo-syncing, easy browsing and scouring, and filters courtesy of Aviary, the photo-app developer’s toolkit. OpenPhoto itself is all about taking control of your images and albums no matter where they’re stored, so you can get used to great organization and storage options, too.

Here’s a bit more about how that works:

The OpenPhoto Android app is coming soon, the project’s leaders say.

Fork it: GitHub repo

Backspaces

The self-proclaimed open-source Instagram is Backspaces, an iPhone app that brings image-based storytelling — and yes, yes, those hipsterrific photo filters you so desperately love — into your sticky hands. It pairs a Tumblr-like series of callout boxes with your images to create cute micro-pages about a given topic, event, or story in your life. Example: The Backspaces team’s story about building the app.

Fork it: GitHub repo

CamanJS

Finally, from former Twitpic engineer Ryan LeFevre, we have CamanJS. Perhaps due to LeFevre’s experience in the word of mobile and browser-based photo-sharing, the quality of the editing and preset filters for Caman JS are truly elegant, both subtle and stunning. Check out this interactive example to see it in action. The toolset is available as a web app, Filters.io, which can connect to a plethora of accounts, including Instagram, Facebook, Flick, and even Dropbox. You can also upload photos or edit them directly from a URL.

Or you can use this filter set as the Lomo+ Chrome plugin right now; it lets you right-click on any image to instantly filter it as you browse around the Innertubes. Hooray!

Here’s a demo:

Fork it: GitHub repo

Top image courtesy of holbox, Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom played a dicey game of semantics in order to expedite the close of the deal between his company and Facebook, a once billion-dollar deal that was losing value with each passing day.

Testifying at a Fairness Hearing at the California Corporations Department in late August, Systrom, according to transcripts obtained by the New York Times, said that his company did not receive “any formal offers or term sheets” immediately preceding negotiations with Facebook. At best, those statements are a distortion of the truth. At worst, they amount to perjury.

Facebook declined to comment on Systrom’s testimony at the Fairness Hearing.

VentureBeat first broke the news that Twitter presented Instagram with a serious offer in the hundreds of millions of dollars range and a corresponding term sheet while the photo-sharing startup was negotiating a $50 million round of funding. Instagram, however, never signed anything. At the time, our sources, which were familiar with the negotiations, confirmed these details, and we still believe them to be accurate.

Nick Bilton at the New York Times surfaced a bit more information on the proposed deal, reporting yesterday that Twitter actually offered $525 million in cash and stock, and that negotiations went up until March 20. Just three weeks later, on April 9, Facebook announced that it had agreed to acquire Instagram for $300 million in cash and 23 million shares. Bilton’s sources said that Twitter would have liked the opportunity to counter and was prepared to do so. VentureBeat heard the same version of events.

The mammoth Facebook-Instagram deal eventually closed, but only after that all-important Fairness Hearing where the California Corporations Department, based on Systrom’s testimony, granted Facebook a permit to issue stock in Instagram. The deal was valued at $715 million when it officially closed in October.

Based on what we know, Systrom’s testimony to the department was not wholly accurate. Whether his statements constituted perjury, we can’t say. Systrom, as Bilton pointed out, was careful with his words, and also deliberate in how he handled the negotiations with Twitter.

We suspect that the repercussions of Systrom’s cunning are already in the works: a destroyed relationship with Twitter and the start of a vicious war for attention.

Photo credit: leweb/Flickr

It’s been clear from the beginning that Facebook’s Instagram buy was more than just about acquiring a photo-sharing service: Instead, Facebook was acquiring another data point.

Instagram is making that even more obvious today with its latest privacy policy update, which will solidify the information-sharing relationship between the two social networks when the sharing goes into effect on January 16.

“As part of our new collaboration, we’ve learned that by being able to share insights and information with each other, we can build better experiences for our users,” the company said.

While that may be true, the truer reason for the integration is far more significant. By integrating data across services, Facebook and Instagram can learn a lot more about you, which makes you a lot more valuable to advertisers.

To be specific, take a look at the most juicy portions of the updated privacy policy. They’re a bit legalistically dense, but I’ve added a pair of translations.

We may share User Content and your information (including but not limited to, information from cookies, log files, device identifiers, location data, and usage data) with businesses that are legally part of the same group of companies that Instagram is part of, or that become part of that group (“Affiliates”).

Translation: Instagram is now wholly a part of Facebook, and so is Instragram’s data.

We may also share certain information such as cookie data with third-party advertising partners. This information would allow third-party ad networks to, among other things, deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you.

Translation: Everything you do on Instragram is now just as valuable as what you do on Facebook. Your location, usage habits, and device ID number will all inform what advertisements show up on either service.

What’s most amazing about the change is just how fast Facebook moved to implement it. The privacy changes were all proposed in the Facebook policy vote that closed a week ago. Unsurprisingly, Facebook is trying to get this off the ground as quickly as possible.

[UPDATED - this app is from ChipotleLabs ... not Instagram]

ChipotleLabs just released a new Instaplayer app to the iOS app store.

The iPad app includes an animated gallery of everyone’s photos, your photos, or the photos of those you follow on Instagram. Included for free is the ability to stream a slideshow to your iPhone — although why you’d want to do that when you already have it on your iPad I’m not sure — or any TV connected to an Apple TV device.

You can also curate your stream with up to four filters by entering locations, hashtags, or users, and watch new photos appear in a printed-by-Polaroid-style animation. I can totally see this happening on a massive screen at a party, event or conference — all photos with the conference hashtag would automatically stream up.

Unlocking this functionality, however, which ChipotleLabs calls InstaRemote, will cost you the princely sum of $0.99.

You can also add sound via another $0.99 upgrade — Instagram has included a “vintage music player” that allows you to add a soundtrack to the photos with either a cassette player (on iPhone) or reel-to-reel (on iPad) music player. Which essentially gives you animated, musical slideshows with Instagram photos.

I’ve downloaded it, and it’s gorgeous. But there is one problem with the app: Instagram’s servers appear to be overloaded right now, and I’m not able to sign into my Instagram account on the app.

So I can’t try and test the new filtered, curated views.

I’ve asked company representatives for a comment on the issue, and will update this when and if VentureBeat hears back from them.

It’s not exactly a tit-for-tat swap, but around the same time Instagram pulled its photos from the Twitter experience, Pinterest pins started appearing inside tweets.

Pinterest formally added support for Twitter Cards within the last week, VentureBeat has confirmed. The release went live as a limited test early last week and received little fanfare until the Twitter-embedded pins were spotted by Pinterest aficionado Kelly Lieberman and the story was picked up by the Daily Dot.

The Pinterest-Twitter mashup means that whenever you post one of your inspirational pins to Twitter, the contents of said pin will appear inside your tweet. With pins inside tweets, people can see a preview of your fashion finds or holiday recipes without having to click through to Pinterest.

The integration leverages Twitter Cards, also known as expanded tweets. The functionality allows third-party partners to put their photos, news, videos, songs, and so forth, inside your tweets for immediate enjoyment.

Twitter has an arsenal of partners pumping content into your tweets, but Instagram is not one of them. The Facebook-owned property unceremoniously dropped support for Twitter Cards last week, citing a desire to drive people to its website for a better experience.

Is it just a coincidence that Pinterest pins have arrived inside tweets as Instagram photos have exited from them? Yes and no. Twitter and Pinterest certainly worked together on the integration, but that may be only because of how Twitter Cards is currently structured. Companies interested in employing Cards go through a formal approval process that requires Twitter to review the implementation before it goes live. Pinterest, however, may have chosen to speed up the implementation process and expand the test after the Instagram dustup.

Regardless, the Pinterest addition is good for Twitter. The more top-tier partners Twitter can get to use Cards, the better its chances are of keeping its members engaged on site or inside the mobile apps longer. Perhaps people may also start to forget what they’re missing.

Update: A Pinterest spokesperson said Thursday, December 13 that the company has ended its test of Twitter Cards. “We have now completed the test and are turning off the integration while we evaluate the results.”

Blue bird image via Shutterstock

Postagram, the mobile app that takes your Instagram photos, prints them, and sends them to your friends as postcards, published a beautiful little love story today. Two long-distance lovers kept in touch with Postagrams … and then received a wonderful, creative gift at their eventual wedding.

I talked to Postagram’s CTO, Bryan Kennedy, about the story.

“Apparently it was a couple that was doing the long distance relationship thing,” Kennedy told me. “The boyfriend sent a Postagram every week. Then, at their wedding, the bride’s sister presented them with a gift made up of those Postagrams.”

Here’s the story, from the Postagram blog in the words of the former girlfriend, now wife, LaDonna Consolo:

Source: Sincerely

Postal love via Instagram and Postagram

When my husband and I first met and started dating we lived about an hour apart, so we could only spend time together during the weekends. The five weekdays would stretch long but Mike would always send me a Postagram with pictures from our weekend and sweet captions that totally melted my heart.

After eleven months of dating, we were married, and my sister used my Postagrams from Mike to create a set of wall hangings to decorate at our reception. These sweet hangings now adorn the wall over our bed, and are a constant reminder of our love story. Most people might think to put these in a typical photo album but these meant so much more to us and we love being able to look at them every day and reminisce.

Thanks for making an app that gives us such a unique way to commemorate special days and preserve our memories. We love you Postagram!

That’s a great story, and great example that connecting with people doesn’t just have to happen via social media or pixels on a screen.

Postagram is a service by Sincerely. The San Francisco company recently launched Sesame, a new gift-in-a-box product line, just a day before Facebook announced its own gift plans.

Image credit: Sincerely

Embroiled in a photo turf war with Twitter, Instagram’s deadly weapon of choice is a revamped iOS application that allows users to snap better, more stylized shots.

The Facebook-owned entity today released a new version of its popular application for iOS, and a more subtly upgraded version for Android. Version 3.2 for iOS gives photo-sharers a completely refreshed camera experience, a new monochrome filter called “Willow,” an enhanced blur tool, larger images in the feed, and design tweaks throughout. Android users, meanwhile, simply get the new Willow filter.

The most significant changes to Instagram’s iOS app are to the camera, or the primary tool people use to shoot and filter their square captures on the photo social network. The Instagram team has entirely changed how the camera experience looks, feels, and functions.

Instagram’s new camera

“The camera has been the core part of the Instagram experience since the day we launched and as a result, we’ve made significant improvements to its look and speed,” the Instagram team said in a blog post.

Instagram users on iOS will find a giant blue Instagram shutter button now beckons them to take their shot. Alongside the button, application users will find a little window that offers up a preview of the most recent photo stored in their camera roll. In addition, the camera screen has been improved to make it a simpler, faster process to select from photos saved in the camera roll. There’s also a new grid guide available for shooting live captures; the grid is also included on the next scale and crop screen (pictured below).

Tilt-shift, the popular blurring effect included in the camera experience, should be noticeably improved in the new iOS app, Instagram said. The application now renders images in a new way so that depth of field is far more realistic and accurate.

The new Willow filter, introduced for both Android and iOS users today, is a monochrome effect with a hint of purple and is said to be ideal for “portraits, still life, and architecture photographs with contrast.”

Meet Willow, Instagram’s newest filter

The updates come as Instagram and former pal Twitter duke it out over your shared photos. Instagram recently dropped support for Twitter Cards, breaking the functionality that shows its filtered captures in-line with tweets. Instagram creator Kevin Systrom said the controversial decision was about driving people back to Instagram for a better experience, but the action has been viewed as an aggressive maneuver designed to do harm to a new foe.

Twitter, for its part, is about to introduce its own photo filters. The information network’s photo-altering features are expected to appear before the end of the year, according to a report that surfaced over the weekend. Hopefully, Twitter’s filters are a bit more enticing than the effects we’ve seen in images posted by Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey in recent days. Otherwise, it would appear that Twitter is bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Instagram 3.2 for iOS and version 3.3 for Android are available now on the App Store and Google Play respectively.

Photo credit: fotoyong/Flickr

In a move that’s just short of waving a big blue flag with an “F” on it, social photo-sharing service Instagram made a decision to de-emphasize its relationship with Twitter recently.

Essentially, Instagram stopped supporting “Twitter Cards,” which enable a third-party company (like Instagram) to embed rich media (pictures, videos, articles, etc.) directly into a tweet that’s displayed on Twitter’s website or native apps. Usually, shutting off this kind of support would mean that your media would no longer have this functionality within Tweets, but Instagram photos continued to show up, except they were cropped weirdly.

The reason for this is because Twitter simply implemented old code that was used to embed photos prior to the existence of the new Twitter Card standard. Since Instagram is still technically sending their photo data to Twitter directly, Twitter was able to continue supporting photo integration, even though it was a broken experience.

However, at any point, Instagram could easily decide to stop sending its photo data to Twitter, and the make-shift Twitter Card “support” would drop entirely — meaning the only way you’d be able to see Instagram photos is when you clicked the link contained within a tweet.

Some publications are reporting that even uncropped Instagram photos are once again being displayed within Twitter Cards, but that doesn’t mean the two service have reconciled. Instagram parent company Facebook told VentureBeat’s Jennifer Van Grove that Instagram’s stance on Twitter Card integration remains the same.

So eventually, Instagram could completely shut off Twitter Card integration, even though it’s already officially stopped supporting Twitter Cards. That means Twitter would need to make an exception to their “Twitter Card” standard if it wants to continue embedding Instagram photos properly. And since that seems like special treatment, I’m not sure how long Twitter will realistically want to do that. (For now, it seems that Instagram is OK with having its user photos embedded within tweets as long as it doesn’t have to lift a finger.)

I’ve reached out to Twitter for further clarification about its current implementation of Instagram photo integration. And we’ll be sure to update the post with more information when they get back to us.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Popular video-chat application Tango has spiced up its iOS and Android apps with fun (and gimmicky) new features including video filters, avatars, read receipts, and more.

Using an insane 2-week development cycle, Tango has been able to constantly outpace Skype (its biggest competitor) when it comes to app updates, Android and iOS hardware support, and new feature development. It has attracted more than 75 million users across various platforms using this strategy. Now it adds even more features that could keep users coming back for more and monetize them.

“We’re always improving the quality of our apps and calls,” Tango CTO Eric Setton told us. “We want you to use it with all of your family and friends.”

The first big update is filters — an addition that will immediately make you think of photo-sharing phenom Instagram. The difference here is that the filters are for live calls. If you’re having an awful hair day or want to spice up your day, pick one of the four filters while on your call. The filters are “Vintage, Holga, Mafia, or Comic.”

“If people are shy or concerned about their appearance, [filters] can help put them at ease,” Setton said.

Next up is avatars that let you talk as a cartoon cat or dog. These avatars mimic your speech so when your mouth opens, the animal’s mouth opens too. Setton says one of the best reasons to use avatars would be if you are trying to get your children to video-chat with grandparents or other relatives. With the avatars in place, hopefully this engages them more. You could also use the avatars in place of your face when you have yet another awful hair day. (Jeez, buy some gel or something.)

Finally, the Tango app on iOS and Android will offer read receipts and a new Checkers game to play with others via Tango. Read receipts aim to let you know when your texts, pictures, and video messages have been viewed by the party you sent. Checkers adds to the list of games like TicTacToe and ToonTag that “millions” of users are playing inside Tango.

The four filters and two animal avatars are free with today’s app update, but it’s easy to guess that Tango will charge for additional options in the future. That way you could talk to your friends in a old-timey sepia filter or call your mom with a creepy rat avatar.

While Setton would not explicitly confirm that Tango would sell extra filters and avatars in the future, he implied it would eventually happen.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tango was founded in 2009 and has raised a total of $87 million from investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Qualcomm Ventures, Access Venture Partners, Bill Tai, Len Blavatnik, and Alex Zubillaga. The company has 110 employees.

Photos via Tango

That chief executive is Damien Patton, the founder of Banjo. A couple of years ago, Patton almost met a friend in Logan International Airport in Boston. The friend had posted on Facebook, Patton had tweeted on Twitter.

Predictably, they missed each other. But the occasion did give Patton an idea for an app that brings all your social networks together and one that treats location as an organizing principle for social updates … which seems, in retrospect, to be such an obvious and intuitive idea.

The third version of Banjo, available today, showcases both location and friends differently than any other app I’ve used. I got an advance preview of the app, which already has three million users in 194 countries, to test yesterday.

Location: the here and the there

Social apps with location awareness are often all about “here” — what’s happening around you right now. ”We want a way to see important things near us, across networks … we shouldn’t miss out on things that are important to us,” Patton told me.

Source: John Koetsier

Banjo organizes all your friends across all your networks into locations

But the “here” is only part of the story, he argues. Often, because you are where you are, you know what’s happening … in your office, your home, or the restaurant. What you don’t know is what’s happening where your 10 friends in New York are, or where your 15 friends in London are.

“Actually, the ‘here’ gets pretty stale,” says Patton. “For most people, 80 percent of their life is office and home. But people don’t want to miss out … they want to know what is going on for their friends everywhere.”

So Banjo organizes all your friends across all your social networks — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more — by location. And it will alert you to common connections who you might know via another friend.

For example, I have friends in Monaco. Sometimes it would be nice to just notice what they’re up to, and perhaps find out that they’re watching the Monaco Grand Prix, or just whiling away the day on a boat in the Mediterranean. For Patton, who is still into racing, knowing that a friend is at a Formula One race in Seoul, Korea, is priceless … as is experiencing the event through his Facebook updates.

It’s not difficult to do the local, Patton said, but doing the “there” is hard — very hard.

Indexing everything

Local events happening now are bounded in time and space. Global events — since you have friends in many cities, potentially around the world — may be bounded in time, but not in space.

The challenge is indexing everything for you real-time, in cities that the cloud-based service behind the Banjo app doesn’t even know you’re interested in, until you start up the app. Patton calls it a “real-time geospatial engine.”

And the connections aren’t just to people you specifically know, either. Banjo goes a little wider than that.

“Banjo created the ability to cross the social graphs,” Patton told me. “For example, it can tell me that a person taking a photo on Instagram is friends with a friend of mine on Facebook … even if I’ve never heard of Instagram.”

Source: John Koetsier

Banjo map view shows you what’s happening across your social graph at a very granular level of location

Patton calls those “common connections.” Banjo starts with friends, moves to connections, and can even show you a public feed of publicly-available social updates: photos, statuses, tweets, and more.

“We’ve indexed 52 billion unique connections,” says Patton. “So when you go to Atlanta, it’s customized to you. We can personalize everything to you as an individual user as it happens.”

That enables all kinds of possibilities, like the ability to find a specific location, filter by a keyword, and find all the people in Chicago at the Bears game, for instance. Or everyone in Silicon Valley who is talking about Ballmer’s recent interview with Reid Hoffman.

That’s both cool and useful, and Banjo’s home screen, which shows you your friends organized by where they are are, is as well. I asked Patton if he envisions people using Banjo as their primary social app, since you can also use it to post to multiple social networks.

“For some, yes,” he  replied. “But it’s really about the power to not miss out on things that are happening all across your social landscape. It’s so noisy right now … but when you look at it through the lens of connections and locations, it’s less noisy.”

Less noise? Sign me up.

Banjo is available for both iPhone and Android.

photo credit: plums_deify via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Instagram may be massively dominating the photo-sharing market, but that hasn’t stopped some worthy contenders emerging to take on the giant. One of these is Hamburg-based iPhone app Tadaa, which has added features and tools galore to appeal to the more serious photographer. I caught up with co-founder Nikolas Schoppmeier to find out why Tadaa is the “Twitter for photos” and just what it does that Instagram doesn’t.

Hi Nikolas, who are you and what are you doing?

I’m one of the founders of Tadaa, a photo-sharing app that lets you edit and apply filters to your photos and share them in a community. In 2012, my co-founder Friedemann Wachsmuth and I sat together and said we wished that there was a Twitter for photos.

We’re both hobby photographers and we also realised carrying an iPhone around is really normal, so most people have a decent camera in their pockets. But we thought that there isn’t a really cool app to share photos with like-minded people, that’s why we created Tadaa. We liked the idea from our background – it’s social and it’s a technological challenge. We took the best developers we had worked with and made baby steps and now we’re at over a million users.

Who are the founders and how did you find each other?

Friedemann and I met in 1999,  when we were working together. We built a tech centre in Hamburg together after that, we did consumer tech products – we were working with 20-30 engineers. We were then at Bebo, which is where the love of social networks started. In 2012 we decided to launch Tadaa, to fill this gap we saw in the market.


What is your unique selling proposition and what makes you different from everyone else?

Well the obvious comparison is to Instagram, but there are some major differences between us. With our site, you don’t have to sign up, you can use Tadaa as a photo editor and you don’t have to share every photo. There’s a vibrant and active community there, it’s very friendly and people love to share, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. We try to be very nice to the user and make it easy and fun to use.

Even if you choose to share  photo, you keep the copyright, not us, unlike Facebook. That’s because we want serious photographers to join our community to feel safe and comfortable posting. The other aspect is the technology, it’s really high quality. We have very high resolution and we have lots of filters. You can simulate the look of a real SLR professional lens and camera with our software. So you can edit the photo in a way that even paid apps don’t offer.

What is your business model?

At the moment it’s a reach play – so we’re trying to build the community and the reach, but for everything else I can’t really say right now.

And how big is the market potential?

The market potential is massive. You have to ask yourself – how many people are going to have a smartphone with a decent camera and how many of them will want to take photos in the future?

I think even Instagram, which is doing a great job, is only grasping a fraction of the market. It’s just the beginning right now.

How did you come up with the name?

We locked ourselves up for the weekend in a countryside lodge and brainstormed for ages and in the middle of the night we came up with the name. We wanted something catchy that works everywhere – it’s like Tadaa! Here is my picture all edited. And it’s not a swearword in any language, which was a plus!

Who is financing you?

The first half year we paid it out of our own pockets. Now we have an interesting group of international, very well connected investors on board – but we’re looking out for more.

Is there something that you missing? An employee, an investor or an office?

We find it hard to find really good people. We really need an iOS and backend person and designers. We’re actively looking right now.

Who would you like to have a lunch with and what would you talk about?

Probably Lady Gaga – it’s not a personal preference…or maybe it is?! But I’d ask her what she wants in an app so she’d use it every day. 

Any advice you’d give for fellow startups?

The one thing is don’t get discouraged by people saying you have no chance. Believe in yourself, do it, stick to it. 

Have you had any regrets?

I’ve never regretted the decision. There are times when you release that half a year ago or a year ago, when you thought you had stress at your old job, you didn’t even really know what stress was.

Sometimes it’s tough, but the milestones you achieve and the feedback you get from users and when you read the reviews and people like the app, it’s really reassuring, at the end of the day I would never, ever regret it, no way.

Where will you be in a year’s time?

Next year will be about growth – building new features. In a marketplace that is so competitive it’s hard to be heard. We need to keep a competitive advantage with our features. So it’s all about growth. We won’t lose the quality though. Plus we’ll work on an Android product.

This story originally appeared on VentureVillage, one of VentureBeat’s syndication partners in Germany.

Photo credits: Tadaa. Except for the cat. That came from the Internet somewhere.