Some thoughts on why Instagram will soon make Twitter an also-ran. The original post appeared on our blog www.socialsquared.in/blog
Picture is worth 140 characters
Rewind to April 2012
After months of speculation Mark Zuckerberg was finally taking Facebook public. While everyone was enamored by the close-to-a-billion users that Facebook had managed to attract (this, despite China not allowing Facebook), no one doubted that the social network had been able to catch the pulse of humanity at large. So, it took many by surprise when Facebook acquired the photo sharing app Instagram for $1 billion in cash & stock. After all, Instagram was just an app, only available on the iOS at that time & was characterized as a company with “lots of buzz but no business model”. Also, with just 13 employees, it was perhaps the highest value per capita ever placed on a start-up team. Onlookers compared it to the foolhardy Flickr acquisition by Yahoo.
After all, Facebook had everything going for it.
1. Facebook had cracked the monetization game better than all previous & existing social networks. The like, comment, share features along with a continuously updating relevant news feed served as opium for consumers.
2. Brands loved the fact that a ‘like’ could mean getting the costumers’ attention forever.
3. Marketers rejoiced the ‘sponsored stories’ that troubled privacy pundits but allowed advertisements to reach friends & friends-of-friends.
However, a few seasoned practitioners of all things digital pointed out the obvious logic for adding the fledgling app to its arsenal.
1. Small-screen-monetization (making money on mobile) is a tough nut to crack & Facebook hadn’t really been able to make much progress.
2. Social sharing was becoming more & more visual – its much more interesting to flip thru photos than read thru blog posts.
3. On mobile everyone needs a medium where you can update instantly, on-the-go & with greater frequency. Twitter was the preferred one on the smaller screen.
With the Instagram acquisition, Facebook took care of the Twitter threat (& to an extent cracked mobile) in one sweep.
Instagram has easier photo sharing (that’s what it is meant for), can make every photo look good (great effects) & hash tags (for search relevance & grouping) & is very very social.
Sounds better than Twitter? Probably that’s what made Jack Dorsey (Twitter founder) invest in Instagram too. Since then, Zuckerberg has gone on record to say that Instagram will “enable users to increase their levels of mobile engagement and photo sharing.”
And in August this year, comScore released data to say that Instagram has surpassed Twitter in daily active users on mobile. Clearly Instagram has figured out mobile engagement.
Where does that leave Twitter? It does have an advertising model in place & 500 million active users against 100 million of Instagram. But the comScore data clearly points out that Instagram is fast catching up.
And it could well be the on the way to replace Twitter – the ease of use has been already explained. Also,
1. Sharing photos is so much more engaging that words alone (even if they are only 140 characters).
2. Not everyone can tweet with ‘wit’ the middle name that T’wit’terati holds in high regard. But with Instagram almost everyone can click great photos.
3. Unlike words, pictures speak a universal language making sharing with anyone worthwhile.
With the power (& the monies) of Facebook firmly behind it, it would be interesting to see how the future shapes up for Instagram.
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
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Amey Asuti
nice read Alok. I remember you saying once that you’re waiting for an Instagram-like acquisition from India. That would be a watershed moment!
Nikesh Rathi
Nice read.
While Twitter seems to have more number of active users, ultimately it will depend upon how are they able to monetize, as you pointed out. Though I would like Twitter to be ahead (have a bias towards this medium!), Facebook’s financial muscle is a big positive for Instagram (and it can easily spend to get larger user base!) & it would be interesting to see how things shape up for Twitter!
Abhijit Bhiku Gaikwad
your article is really good. It was nice to read the comparison.
Comparing Instagram with Twitter is not a fair comparison. Instagram is a photo sharing service while Twitter is a product which can have a service like instagram. Things like egypt revolution can only happen on Twitter. Its wide open to public while facebook/instagram come under more of a private category. they serve different purposes.
but as a company you are right instagram can be a threat. the parameter that u used i.e number of active users on instagram might come as data insufficiency. Cause instagram started with lower user base and after fb acquasition it was expected to go up. it will be interesting to see how these number are over an year.
Amey Asuti
hey Abhijit, while Twitter is a fantastic product/service in itself, the very fact is that apps can now challenge companies. F & T continue to remain the preferred social channels for most brands as of today but how knows with these numbers on its side, Instagram could well change that. And as they always say, only time will tell!
Amey Asuti, Social Squared