One of the fastest growing trends in the social world is photo sharing. With the proliferation of smart phones, apps that are dedicated to sharing photos across multiple networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr are becoming all the rage. One perfect example is Instagram, an iPhone app that lets you take pictures, add quirky filters and then upload them to Instagram’s own network, as well as Facebook and Twitter. The app has gained five million users in rougly 8 months, which is insane for a start up. Instagram is the golden child, but there are more photo sharing apps on the mobile platforms than one can count. Photo sharing apps are the new black (and red and green and every other color of the rainbow plus a whole other double rainbow). Techcrunch just released information about a new photo sharing iPhone app in development. “Cool, throw it on the pile,” should have been my response. So what’s the catch on this one that is making me stop and write about it? It’s from Facebook.
Five million users for a start up like Instagram is pretty impressive, but Facebook is rocking an established user base in the hundreds of millions. The existing Facebook iPhone app has been on the top 25 downloads list in the app store since… well forever (along with that one about the vexed birds). If you have an iPhone, you have the Facebook app. Adoption rate on this Facebook photo sharing app is going to be off the charts. Facebook is making a good move at keeping itself the biggest photo hosting site on the web. Mobile is huge and it looks like Facebook is positioning itself to be the main place for social, both on and off of our computers.
