Mobile photo sharing has exploded and we’ve taken notice.
Within one week of its launch in October, photo sharing app Instagram had 100,000 signups. Seven months later, it had 4.25 million users.
Online photo sharing has long-been popular: Picasa launched in 2002; Flickr was founded in 2004, and Facebook was home to about 60 billion photos by the end of 2010. But mobile applications have suddenly exploded in popularity. Photo shooting and editing apps like Hipstamatic, Darkroom and CameraBag have been downloaded to millions of smartphones in the the past couple of years.
Technology has improved, there are a proliferation of apps, and the availability of access have lowered the entry bar to photography. These reasons along with the social networking opprotunities present in the backend of applications have fuled growth.
Flying below the radar of the hype behind mobile photo sharing are the search capability opportunities present, which prompts a few questions: Will we see eventually see ads on these networks? Will this impact the stock photo industry? Will we see the adoption of Creative Commons to protect one’s creative work? Will Google index these networks?
Can you think of more questions or have any answers?
