Instagram Now Adding 130,000 Users Per Week

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/10/instagram-adding-130000-users-per-week/

by BvS • 15 years ago

26 17 15 years ago

Wow, they completely exposed their data set. Don't see many companies giving away cohort retention details like this.

The post was written by a 3rd party and not Instagram. The last section of the article explains how they managed to get the data:

"Four things allowed us to conduct this analysis: Instagram’s new API, their use of incrementing ID numbers to represent users and photos, the central limit theorem"

dreamux• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, this isn't very rigorous - the dataset can easily be gamed by instagram.

naithemilkman2• 15 years ago

Well my point was more that Instagram exposed enough data such that RJ Metrics were able to get access to enough information to extrapolate the cohort retention rates.

joebananas2• 15 years ago

And I have to wonder how many of those users will come to regret that they shot all their babby-pictures in some deliberately cruddy format instead of the best possible available to them.

dabent• 15 years ago

If I take a photo with my iPod, I know it's really low quality to start, so I don't take things I'm going to archive with it. Hopefully others do the same.

But I also take pictures with the camera app first, save them to the camera roll and then pull them into Instagram/picplz if I want to share them. That way, I've got to versions if I want to get all retro with what I'm sharing. Or I can just share the picture as-is.

pclark2• 15 years ago

You can ask Instagram to save the photo unfiltered too.

joebananas2• 15 years ago

But people don't.

dailo102• 15 years ago

True, it's not a DSLR picture. But they're making it so much easier for amateurs to edit and share a photo they just took with their phone... versus having to transfer a photo to computer, edit it, upload it, and then share it.

edd• 15 years ago

While I know what you are trying to get at please for a moment think about what you are saying. For most people photos aren't about optical perfection. Photos are a trigger. They are there to trigger a feeling of what a moment was like, to capture what the smells, the sounds and the atmosphere were like at a given point in time. A photo with a new born baby, you and your first girl/boy friend, you an your degree certificate.. these are personal moment with personal feelings. Its about what the moment means to you.

I look at photos I took 10 years ago with my 620x480 camera and I am not upset I didn't take them with a film camera, because the photos still have all the important things to let me relive that moment.

beck5• 15 years ago

This sort of story reminds me no idea has (or can) been executed perfectly, a year ago I would have said Flickr has photo sharing sewn up...

bmelton• 15 years ago

I still agree that they do, for one. I mean, obviously, the market is fickle, and will go where other people are, even if it's not the best tool on the market -- but Flickr's toolset is amazing and insanely capable.

The major difference though, is that Instagram has carved out a niche in the photo sharing market that Flickr doesn't have -- casual, lower-quality photos. IMO, Flickr (and SmugMug, to a large degree) became the place to go if you're a serious, or at least semi-serious photographer. More value is placed on the quality and 'interestingness' of the photo -- the majority of those photos are taken via DSLRs and high-quality gear, not iPhones / Androids.

I don't necessarily see Instagram as competition to Flickr, but I think it's safe to say that if Yahoo keeps Flickr stagnant, we'll see others gaining traction in this space as well.

dailo102• 15 years ago

That's impressive growth! They've carved out a niche for mobile photo sharing with their iPhone app. Now they're letting developers extend on the web via the API.

People usually talk about viral growth on Facebook, but Instagram has recreated it on the iPhone platform. And they haven't even released their Android version yet!

Instagram Now Adding 130,000 Users Per Week

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