In October of last year I said goodbye to Instagram - it was a sweet departure and it has been a great one as I don’t regret it at all.
Yet even my next choice, Path, wasn’t a perfect alternative and only kept me interested for a few months. Ugh. You see, I still wanted the functional aspects of a good image capture system with nice filters without the overhead of privacy and without sacrificing creative freedom.
In other words, I still wanted to post filtered images but to do so simply wasn’t very simple. As you can see, I enjoy posting filtered images on Twitter every so often:
This is this generation’s “Game Boy”… iPod. twitter.com/saddington/sta…
— John Saddington (@saddington) February 14, 2013
Yes. I chose wisely. Great wifi too. twitter.com/saddington/sta…
— John Saddington (@saddington) February 11, 2013
Pacing around the @wpdailyco office… Trying to get Thursday off the ground. twitter.com/saddington/sta…
— John Saddington (@saddington) February 7, 2013
Seat’s taken. twitter.com/saddington/sta…
— John Saddington (@saddington) January 28, 2013
@roenne and @arden testing some beats and gear. twitter.com/saddington/sta…
— John Saddington (@saddington) January 22, 2013
Thanks for stopping by our office @8bit,@kasimreed ! Excited about startups in Atlanta! twitter.com/saddington/sta…
— John Saddington (@saddington) January 10, 2013
But to do that I needed to use Instagram (*gasp*) for the filters, save it locally, add some text (if I wanted to via another app and save “again” in that scenario) then upload it via Tweetbot or Twitter app to Twitter.
Sigh. This was a lot of button clicks and time spent. And, ultimately I still wasn’t able to capitalize on the traffic or creative work that was mine on my own blog – the traffic went to Twitter which I’d much rather capture on my own blog.
In a nutshell, I haven’t been satisfied with my implementation and there was no obvious recourse.
My question to you is this:
Are you 100% satisfied with you Instagram experience? What is missing? What do you like? What would you like to see instead?
I know this is an incredibly open-ended question but I’d love to hear your thoughts. I am in the middle of building a small app that will address these challenges that I have for myself but I’m thinking about whether I will release it publicly.
This would obviously impact the features and the timeline of the release because it would introduce some more complexity, but I’d be willing to undertake it if enough people expressed interest or decent features.
This is my one side project for 2013. Appreciate it!
*UPDATE*
I personally love instagram. The community built around pictures is awesome.
I dont like how Twitter has stopped allowing us to view instagram pics from their site.
so there’s nothing that you don’t like?
My main beef with Instagram is that it’s a social network first and a photo app second. You can’t use Instagram (easily) without also using the social aspect.
What I would love to see is an app as good at shoot-filter-caption as Instagram is, but instead only delivers the photos to a certain set of people that I’ve specified…by email. Options to post to Tw/Fb/Tumblr would be there, too, but the main function is delivering photos to my family automatically.
Even better would be if this app bundles all my photos each day into a digest and *then* sends it to my family. My mom, grandmom, sister, stepmom, dad, brother, etc are tired of social media and want to see kid photos. But I get tired of sending a dozen SMS messages when I take a pic.
I built PicDigest.com to somewhat solve this, but it still requires the social middleman. If you’re keen on this user experience, I’d be open to partnering and letting you use the PicDigest source and Heroku backend to deliver the photos.
i think your picidest is an interesting implementation that solves a need but the solution limits it’s adoption and appeal.
it’s the social layer that really drives sharing behavior in a lot of ways, right?
You’re absolutely right.
Scott, have you tried https://ifttt.com ?
I would love one for my blog so that I get the traffic rather than the supernetworks. Having the quick ability to edit some pictures via my phone or my desktop without having to open up photoshop would be amazing.
I’ve been trying some stuff with “if this then that” to help my workflow. I’ve been wondering if you use if this then that for any of your workflow?
at this time i have to. it’s a hodge-podge experience.
same here. With all the applications that I use, sometimes it’s not worth it to have a connecting piece because it doesn’t cover everything in my workflow.
But every little bit helps, right?
I don’t really have any problems with Instagram…I find it easier than Path…to drive traffic away from twitter I use IFTTT.com to post my Instagram pictures to one of my blogs then WordPress handles posting everything to Twitter/Facebook.
clever. do you have any issues with using instagram as the mechanism for creating the images and the TOS?
Nope, no issues so far
This sounds awesome!
I don’t like the fact that I have a publicly viewable “instagram profile”. I’d like to be able to SOMETIMES post to JUST facebook, or JUST twitter, etc.
I think you could be onto a winner!
so, no http://instagram.com/user_name?
This sounds like it wouldn’t change your workflow that much, but have you tried Snapseed? It’s definitely a photo editing app first (filters included) and a social app second. On Android, once you’ve edited a photo, it saves it to your phone and you can upload it directly to g+. I don’t know what the experience would be on iOS but I’d imagine it’d be similar.
i will check this out.
I was just about to suggest Snapseed as well.
Personally, I never got into Instagram at all. When I’ve needed to do something with twitter pictures (almost never), Snapseed has worked well. It has great filtering capabilities and simple sharing (Google+, Email, Twitter, FB). Needs Pinterest.
thanks jason, appreciate this! checking it out.
I do enjoy Instagram for the Social aspect but in the end, 1 like it 10000 likes really means nothing in the end.
I too have gone to Snapseed as my default photo editor and have just stumbled upon Aviary. Very simple and quick editing. It’s worth a look.
For me – I sort of like them all: Instagram, twitter and the other photo apps… I just get to use them and showcase that. I am liking how rebelmouse is helping me do that on my website as well…
rebelmouse?
Oh, I really like Instagram. I love interacting with others around the globe, and it’s helpful sometimes – just this morning, through it, someone gave me a source for a macro lens for my iPhone . My Insta feed is full of Australian waves, Dubai camels, Finland snow, etc. And everyone is so friendly. It has definitely improved my own photography & faith in mankind.
As a blogger, I like it for connecting with brands (the few that are on there regularly), and for posting my photos to Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all at once.
Two things I wish for: To blog a photo straight from Instagram (currently, I go to Flickr, get the HTML, then put it on my blog). And to ‘like’ comments, which I admit is a bit Facebooky, but I wish for it often.
neat. very neat.
how do you “connect” with brands?
I comment on their posts. And sometimes a brand, like Lowe’s Home Improvement is doing, will request IGers show your projects by using a certain hashtag. When you hashtag your photos with this, they see it, and occasionally promote it. This hasn’t resulted in working with brands, but that’s not really my goal — I’m using it more to keep up with what they’re doing with new social media. Vine is even more interesting that way, as it’s brand new, and it’s interesting which brands are paying attention.
I’m a huge fan of Instagram. The complaints about the social layer don’t make sense to me. If you want a photo editor use SnapSeed either for your phone or desktop, or both, or Camera+, or Wood Camera, or any of the great photo apps.
If you want to make a PicDigest, just lock your IG account and only friend your family. Heck, if you’re just fed up with “another” social space, using SnapSeed plus posting to G+, FB, or Twitter, is a fantastic solution.
I’ve seen several brands in a space I’ll soon be in do some amazing things for their company’s reach using IG. Could this be accomplished with T, FB, or another site, yes, sure, no… maybe. The point is, people go to IG for the photos and if you or your business can benefit from that type of exposure, great. If not, find another outlet.
One of the main issues you had was privacy, and after the IG privacy debacle, many people panicked. Not being well verses in Twitter’s privacy for photos, specifically, I’d ask what is the main difference between it and IG’s, then you’d have the privacy part locked down right? I’m assuming Twitter has a stance and you’re ok with it.
Aside from that, maybe an app that has a built in watermark feature for those that care. And IG would be immensely better for me if it had a text over feature like… Over.
I plan to use IG heavily in the next few months, and beyond, because I hope to piggy-back or replicate some of the great successes I’ve seen from other brands. However, I also plan to do the same on Twitter, and possibly G+, not feeling FB right now. Driving traffic back to my site will hopefully come from the URL in the bio, in the description of photos themselves, and perhaps a watermark/in-photo branding piece.
great thoughts here chase. love it.
the problem i had with privacy was a big one for a moment but i understand the difference between data control/management and creative license from the content creator. but it’s not too big of an issue for me to continue to use other services, like twitter, who then help me share the content publicly.
the reason i use twitter is because there are no other “hosting” options that I’m interested in using at this time. laziness partly but complexity of workflow mainly.
do you think you would ever want something more than just a link in the bio? what are the “great” successes you’ve seen and how does that convert from a business perspective?
Specifically, I’ve sen two fitness brands, Flex ‘Til You’re Famous and P28, and some other apparel brands do great things with a mix of IG and other social platforms. FTYF as an apparel company continues to sell out within hours of launching the latest drop of their products. Now, I understand sexy, fitness people all shirtless is great fodder for a photo app, but they post more than that.
Having the ability to put clickable links in the photo description would be amazing. How you manage that with link spam and such, I don’t know. More mature user base?
Another irksome thing with IG is the inability to click the avatar. You can’t even click it to see a larger version, its the strangest thing. Maybe that’s an opportunity for a link, I don’t know.
I understand the laziness/workflow perspective, but really is that any different than bouncing between any other platforms to spread your message? If, as a brand, you’re posting the same content, both in type and verbiage, to all platforms, you’re doing it wrong. Each ecosystem has a language, rules, and social norms that must be adhered too. Imagine a 9Gag’er on Reddit… ha!
Now that privacy is “kind of” off the table, what are your other huge hangups?
Chiming in: I’d also love a watermark feature, that’s as simple as clicking a watermark icon, and it goes on the photo (it would be great if I could slide it around to a good location, so it doesn’t mess up my photo).
And I’d also like links to be live within the Instragram comments. They are not currently clickable.
I agree with Chase about the text over feature -that would be rad, and would eliminate the need for 3 apps for one photo. I think Over does it extremely well.
I don’t mind the social layer of instagram, but I agree with your “goodbye instagram” post about wanting to photograph something so much so that you are no longer in the moment. Do you think this is due to attention via the social network? Or something else? This is currently the reason why I’ve stepped away from Facebook (for the time-being, but perhaps for forever).
About driving traffic to your blog. I tried an IFTTT action for instagram photos and it was just well, too much. I instagram alot. And, I don’t want to send every single post to my blog, nor do I want to include a hashtag – or the appending “photo from instagram” for the week or so that I attempted this, it was more annoying than helpful. So the ability to create a blog post from within the app would be stellar.
I also like the idea of a digest, I send lots and lots of photos via text to family and I think that would be really helpful especially if done automatically.
The other thing I’ve found interesting is sharing a photo directly to facebook (even if instagram) gets more traffic/likes/comments than sharing a photo through instagram. I’m not sure why that is, but I’ve experimented quite a bit and get the same results.
Can’t wait to see what comes out of this discussion!
I do enjoy Instagram for the Social aspect but in the end, 1 like it 10000 likes really means nothing in the end.
I too have gone to Snapseed as my default photo editor and have just stumbled upon Aviary. Very simple and quick editing. It’s worth a look.
I’ve never even tried Instagram.
I’ve really enjoyed using Instagram and when I combine it w/ an ifttt recipe they are backed up to Evernote automatically.
Also, I’ve got Dropbox setup to upload images from my phone so they’re available on my desktop anytime.
I do enjoy Instagram, but if you’re not a huge brand I don’t think it really adds to your personal brand. I agree John that simply driving Likes & Hearts to my Instagram profile doesn’t add anything to my traffic. People don’t click through to my blog just as a course of flipping through pictures.
My 2 favorite workarounds right now are using an IFTT recipe to automatically save my photos to Dropbox, and I can use on my blog from there. \
The other is by using Camera+, which I have found to be incredibly robust with features, filters, and editing, much more so than Insta. After saving to photo gallery, I’ll open up the photo in the Over app, and adding typography beauty from there. At that point I can then put on Dropbox and use as needed. SnapSeed is the same or better than Camera+, but I don’t think the higher cost is worth it.
What I would love is the editing power of Camera+/SnapSeed and the font options of Over, that would be awesome.
I’ve been enjoyiing instagram more and more, actually. Since a lot of people are on there, there are always interesting people to follow. It seems like the security concerns were dealt with, no?
Have you tried just using Twitters built in filters after uploading instead of using Instagram for the filters?