Why Instagram Can Become The Mobile Social Hub
Trey Ratcliff, creator of 100 Cameras and I — Of all the apps on my iPhone, the ones that get most attention for me involve photos — from the built-in Camera app to Camera+ to photo filter apps such as Noir, ColorBlast and Hipstamatic.
Context & Ripple Effects
Trey Ratcliff's case for Instagram as the mobile social hub lands on top of a year of buildup: the service was already being written up in late 2010 for its addictive pull, and by April 2011 the New York Times' Bits blog had documented how Instagram had spawned its own photo ecosystem of companion apps and services. What Ratcliff adds is a practitioner's vantage point — he describes an iPhone photography workflow built from Camera+ plus filter apps like Noir, ColorBlast and Hipstamatic — and argues the social layer, not the filter, is where the hub position gets won.
First-order effects
- Single-purpose filter and camera utilities in Ratcliff's own stack — Noir, ColorBlast, Hipstamatic — are directly challenged by an app that bundles filtering with a network, since Instagram absorbs the function they charge for while adding distribution they lack.
Second-order effects
- Camera and filter developers are pushed to choose between building their own social layers or positioning as feeders into Instagram's graph, shifting value in the iPhone photo market from image processing toward whoever owns the sharing relationship.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, mobile photo apps consolidate from utilities into networks: the durable asset becomes the social graph and the habit of posting, with filter technology commoditized as a feature rather than a product category.
The trend: Mobile photography is migrating from standalone camera-and-filter utilities toward social networks where the photo stream itself is the product.