Instagram Debuts On Android 84
redletterdave writes "Popular photo-sharing app Instagram, which has been one of the most popular social start-ups despite only being housed on a single platform (iOS), was finally released onto the Android ecosystem on Tuesday. The app, which boasts more than 10 million users and plenty of ways to stylize and share photos, is available as a free download from Google Play."
Someone is going to create the ultimate social app (Score:5, Funny)
Soon, someone will create a social network app that limits posters to one short word, and/or one video of a douchebag face-planting into a tree. The public will embrace it with slavish devotion, every old fart on CNN will sign up for it in a desperate bid to show that they're still hip with the kids, and all subsequent public discourse will be reduced to exchanges like:
@ballz: Hey
@iluvvampires: Wsup?
@wolfCNN: Hello.
@hotgirl234: Yeah!
@Avenger938: Ha! [video of drunk guy running into tree on motorcycle]
Re:Someone is going to create the ultimate social (Score:5, Funny)
twitter? Is that you?
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Re:Someone is going to create the ultimate social (Score:5, Funny)
Well you can take your character limit and sho
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Omg, rofl
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No, Flutter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeLZCy-_m3s [youtube.com]
Re:Someone is going to create the ultimate social (Score:5, Funny)
Youmustbenewhere.
I fully intend to steal that idea (Score:2)
Just today I was thinking "I feel like coding something but can't think of anything that would be reasonably novel, fun and - most importantly - effortless to implement".
If I implement that and become a multimillionaire, I will find out where you live, fly there and buy you a beer... Are we OK, IP-rights-wise?
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We would be very, very fortunate if the video was just of a drunk guy running into a tree on a motorcycle on CNN, especially when the contents of sites like tubgirl, lemonparty, two girls one cup, and goatse are still floating around.
There's a big push for Bring Your Own Device in schools and businesses. Given the things people use their own tech for, I can see a massive increase in the incidences of pornography showing up with BYO
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Who cares (Score:3, Informative)
Hosted, proprietary, social-media-based photo sharing is hardly news for nerds. We have FTP, SCP, HTTPS upload, and we know how to configure it TYVM.
Re:Who cares (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably should have said "uncontrollably hosted" instead of just hosted. Nothing wrong if you're hosting it yourself, or at least understand the privacy and control implications of someone else hosting it.
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Hey don't mod me up too far, I was amending my own comment! :-P
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I have all of that at my disposal and know how to use it, and I used to host my own photos... but honestly, I'd rather not anymore.
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you insensitive clod
have you ever thought that his cats might want some privacy?
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Mark Zuckerberg didn't do anything that we "nerds" couldn't do, either, but he turns 28 this month and could buy Spain if he wanted to, and you can't.
Instagram got 10M users with one app on one platform. How many people follow any of your sites? It is indeed newsworthy. One thing we nerds need to know is what is going on in the tech world that our friends and family are asking and talking about--not just sticking our heads in the sand yelling "the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached!" like Grandpa Simpson.
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it's just a bunch of sw-filters on your pics and easy way to post them up.
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Slashdot is just a blog with a comment section. How long have you been here?
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longer than you, it seems.
and slashdot isn't being valued at 100mils+.
I mean, if instagram did surface analysis and sampled higher quality parts to pictures based on that or something similar, yeah I'd agree them to be worth 100mil+, but otherwise I'm pretty certain that the revolution will not be instagrammed.
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longer than you, it seems.
Exactly. Slashdot has held your interest for 12 years or so with very pedestrian technology.
and slashdot isn't being valued at 100mils+.
Slashdot belongs to Geeknet, so wo can give it an actual valuation rather then have analysts guessing. Geeknet is worth 92.41 million. Less then Instagram, but in the same ball park.
I mean, if instagram did surface analysis and sampled higher quality parts to pictures based on that or something similar, yeah I'd agree them to be worth 100mil+
LOL! Companies aren't valued on how impressive their technology is. With free services, the value comes in how big the audience is and how susceptible they are to advertising.
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It isn't.
There, just saved you a bunch of time and bother!
Why should I care? (Score:1)
What makes this app so special?
Re:Why should I care? (Score:5, Funny)
It's a photo app that turns the images from your already crap phone camera into even worse photos in the style of a broken Polaroid camera, like all the other photo filter apps out there, but this one is tied to one specific web service. Basically, it takes shittier photos under worse terms.
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Do you wear jeans and a t-shirt?
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What makes this app so special?
If you don't use it, you lose your hipster union card.
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Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've never seen these filters. Can you point out any examples for the morbidly curious?
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I heard of a great website to find such things easily: http://www.google.com/ [google.com]
But basically they are filters that makes contemporary shitty photos taken by smartphones look like 70s shitty photos taken by polaroids, which are considered not shitty anymore because well I don't know, hipsters I guess
camera (Score:1)
My Android tablet doesn't have a camera... how does this help me?
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1) You don't matter.
2) It doesn't appear to support tablets with camera's for that matter anyway.
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StreamZoo does. Instagram sounds exactly like streamzoo on Android for that matter.
Instagram as Played-Out as Sparkle Fairies (Score:2)
Instagram was nifty the first time I saw it... Oh, the halcyon days of photography. Now it is just played-out. Let it go, folks.
Cheers,
Matt
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It's kind of funny that it's played-out just as Android gets it.
It's kind of like a genre of music or a fashion losing it's cool when parents start to like it.
can someone explain the purpose behind it? (Score:2)
i've used it on iOS a little. i know it does filters, but what is the purpose behind the following and sharing?
it seems that most of these social apps are so you can directly follow your fave celebrities on twitter and say how cool they are when they post a pic. instead of waiting for the monthly magazine with the stalkerazzi photos
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If you're mostly getting stuff from celebrities, it's the social apps way of telling you you have no real friends.
Because cell phone pictures are too high quality! (Score:2)
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and cats.
Not there yet (Score:2)
Just checked Google Play and no Instagram yet.
Funny Or Die tweet (Score:1)
"Really hope someone manages to get a picture of the sky or some food now that Instagram is on android."
I was about to blame \. (Score:2)
...but then I realized the article itself was a factor of 3 off on the number of Instagram users.
From Instagram's own press release today [instagram.com], they have over 30 million users on their service, not 10 million. The citation for the 10 million number the article uses is an Instagram blog post from 6 months ago [instagram.com]. Lazy journalism if they can't even take the time to read the press release for the topic they're writing about.
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...but then I realized the article itself was a factor of 3 off on the number of Instagram users.
From Instagram's own press release today [instagram.com], they have over 30 million users on their service, not 10 million. The citation for the 10 million number the article uses is an Instagram blog post from 6 months ago [instagram.com]. Lazy journalism if they can't even take the time to read the press release for the topic they're writing about.
That's ok since the numbers of active users published by any company are already inflated (by a factor of 10?) so being off by a factor of 3 doesn't mean much.
There once was a time when a news source was being lazy when they only reported on what was in the press release, I guess we've sunk even farther when now a journalist is lazy because they didn't even read the press release. I guess eventually we'll reach the point where news articles will read "Something happened today, go google it yourself"
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I guess eventually we'll reach the point where news articles will read "Something happened today, go google it yourself"
Except that worse happens today - news articles read "Something important happened today, but no way on earth are we letting you know what it is. Better, we tell you what didn't happen"
Hipster-iffic (Score:1)
Glad I'm not the only one (Score:3)
That doesn't understand the appeal to this app. I've already got Vignette to do double the crappy hipster filtres that Instagram does; but Vignette gives me the option to customize and make my own.
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As lame as most of the shit is on IG, there are some truly great users/pics. Nat Geo, Auto Addicts, Love Food, Discovery Channel, Red Bull, and One Earth are a few of the really good ones that I follow. Their pics are good enough that they don't use the filters. If you can get a good list of users to follow, it is actually a pretty cool app to waste time/battery on.
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But I've already got Twitter to follow those types of things. Or Flickr where I can view much higher quality images. Or Facebook. Or Tumblr.
I guess I may just be social'ed out and not want to have to craft yet another list of people who make 50 boring posts for every interesting one they post. I know I'm included in that, I just don't see why I should contribute, or pay attention to even more noise.
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That's a good point. However, me for example, I don't use any of the services you mentioned, and I've been able to find users that have a good "interesting:not_interesting" ratio, on IG. So I dig it. But I get your point it is utterly redundant for a lot of people who are already using other social apps similar to IG.
What's with the name? (Score:2)
I don't know how Google came up with "Play" as a new name. Granted, "iTunes" isn't much better, but at least there's a historical reason for that: once upon a time, it was used for organizing only music, and when theit store first came out, it only sold music. So iTunes grew naturally over time and the name got grandfathered in. If Apple were to start from scratch today with all their content but no name, there's no way they would have named it all "iTunes."
And if Google is really going to make a tablet and [kindel.com]
Demographics? (Score:1)
Oh god please let the IG users on Droids be less tweens/teenyboppers than the IG iPhone demographics. The popular pic page is already polluted to hell and back with the boy band pics, pedo fodder, and downright stupid shit. The ToS for IG states 13 years or older to use it. I swear at least 1/3rd of their users are under 13, given the garbage that makes it to the popular page.
dafuq (Score:2)
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History repeating (Score:2)
Remember 1996? People pirated Photoshop and Kai's Power Tools, then everyone else mocked their photos for containing Lens Flare or Solarize. Or Watercolor.
Why is it that in 2012, people are trying to appear 'artistic' by passing their memories through the same filters everyone else uses? Where's the mockery?
Tangent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X71WXhOyWj8 [youtube.com]
Now if it only worked on more devices (Score:2)
I've been looking to install this to see what all the hype is about and because the Facebook app I work on at work can integrate with it. Unfortunately it's not compatible with my device and from what I've been reading in the comments of the Android news sites it's not compatible with a lot of other devices as well (including tablets like Toshiba Thrive, Acer A500/A100, ASUS Transformer Prime and some HTC, Samsung, and Motorola phones as well).
Totally lame. I don't usually see this many device incompatibili
Here's the appeal, to answer your questions (Score:3)
It makes mundane photos look more interesting. It makes interesting photos more interesting. Some pics lend themselves very well to the Instagram treatment and do have artistic* merit. It makes older people feel nostalgic for the days when photos actually looked like that. It's easy for Joe Average to share photos using it without having to set up their own web server, install Linux on it, get Apache running, install MYSQL, install Wordpress, etc. (I know I know, you can do all that stuff easily without having to use an app like this; well done you tedious fucking know-it-alls).
*Art, for the benefit of the naysayers, evokes an emotion. If a photo looks a certain way that makes you feel excited, nostalgic, happy sad or any other emotion, then it has succeeded in becoming a piece of art. It may not have any monetary value to the Tate Gallery, but among friends and family it can mean a lot.
So why don't you all take your stuck up "I'm too cool for this app" attitudes and your artistic illiteracy back down to Mommy's basement. You're like the guy who said "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." when the iPod came out. Where's he now and where's Apple now? Can you tell me that? Huh? Huh? Well? Can ya?
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It makes mundane photos look more interesting.
No, it makes mundane photos look like they were passed through filters.
It makes interesting photos more interesting.
No, it makes interesting photos look like they were passed through filters (and thus are less interesting).
Some pics lend themselves very well to the Instagram treatment and do have artistic* merit.
Yes, some do. But sadly most of them look like mundane pictures passed though filters.
...and do have artistic* merit... Art, for the benefit of the naysayers, evokes an emotion. If a photo looks a certain way that makes you feel excited, nostalgic, happy sad or any other emotion, then it has succeeded in becoming a piece of art
Is this all art is now? That is, in my opinion, rather depressing. Art, as a rule, also depends on a level of mastery, skill, technique, experience, and control. A crappy out-of-focus snapshot, taken on a crappy phone camera, and run through s
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I don't live with my mother, I live with your mother. Remember? When I'm done boning her tonight I must tell her to give you a good clip around the ear for being so unbiddable, you little scamp.
I mean, are you so fucking stupid that you can't understand the meaning of some? I said that "some" have artistic merit as a result of being run through Instagram. In any case you haven't seen any of the photos that I've seen, so who the fuck are you to say that they're all crap? Fuck you! Fuck you to high heaven yo
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A couple weeks ago, while taking my asian girlfriend shopping at the local mall, I had to take a piss. As I entered the john, Steve Jobs -- the messiah himself -- came out of one of the booths. I stood at the urinal looking at him out of the corner of my eye as he washed his hands. He didn't once look at me. He was busy and in any case I was sure the security guards wouldn't even let me shake his hand.
As soon as he left I darted into the booth he'd vacated, hoping there might be a lingering smell of shit an
I'm glad the only thing the Slashdot community... (Score:2, Insightful)
...gets from this story is that it's "just" a social media app, "just" a stupid way to put filters on your crappy cell phone pics.
Sure is. And it's going to make their founders mountains of cash. If it were so easy, why didn't you come up with it? Eh? Is making money beneath you, snobby Slashdot User?
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To misquote a movie I haven't even seen, "If you could have invented Instagram, you would have invented Instagram."
I use Instagram every day. It's fucking awesome.
And the developers didn't consider Android important enough to do an Android port until the iPhone app was just right.
Why this matters (Score:2)
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
H. L. Mencken