More than a third of mobile phone users will be on Instagram in 2016
More than 90% of Instagram users are said to be under 35. Its user base, which is now more than 400 millionworldwide, is larger than Twitter’s. EMarketer projects it will top 100 million people in the U.S. alone by 2018.
Austin-based nFusion recently published a marketer’s guide about how to get going on Instagram — but only if you’ve got a good reason to be there. We asked the agency’s managing director, Matt Huser, to elaborate on a few of its points and to name some names.
What makes Instagram different from good branding practices on other social media?
Matt Huser: The beauty and obvious aspect of Instagram is that it is visual -- which is the reason it's so compelling. By being visual, it weeds out a lot of the frivolous updates you get on Facebook and Twitter.
Also for that reason, Instagram lends itself to more lifestyle content, and people tend to follow the brands that reflect their lifestyles. So it’s the perfect platform for brands to increase their relevance and engagement with their audiences by aligning to their followers’ lifestyles, many times turning them into advocates.
The brands that utilize Instagram well post images that communicate their brand DNA and reveal some deeper truth or connection about the brand.
Instagram feeds that show behind-the-scenes images that their followers wouldn't normally be able to see through traditional media are most effective. Many fashion brands like Burberry and Rag and Bone do a good job of showing lifestyle images, not product images. Product may be included in the posted images, but it isn’t the focus.
Burberry focuses on images of London because London is such a foundational part of that brand, and a brand itself, which Burberry does well to align to. Rag and Bone shows people in action, mostly.
Because Instagram is visual, the marketers who participate are often more thoughtful. It forces marketers to have a strategy and to create content specifically for the channel. So it weeds out the brands that shouldn’t be on Instagram; there’s less noise than a Facebook or Twitter [post].
Is it as critical to be on Instagram as it is to be on Facebook and Twitter?
Huser: I don’t think it’s critical for every brand to have a presence on social media. In fact, as the social channels get more diluted with paid messaging, some brands may find it more advantageous to not be on a platform.
And companies should have discrete strategies for each platform.
For example, Twitter is a great customer-service platform. Facebook is a good platform to keep consumers informed, while Instagram is a good platform to play to people’s passions … to connect with a lifestyle. Brands should stay true to their DNA and not force themselves into a channel that isn’t aligned to a strategy. That said, Instagram is the fastest-growing platform, so you can’t ignore it.
Can you name a few marketers who are doing a particularly good job?
Huser: The ones that I like align to my lifestyle.
Publishers like Rolling Stone show amazing photography, accompanied by a caption of the behind-the-scenes stories from the actual shoot. As a music buff, I love those stories.
Patagonia does a great job of presenting beautiful photography of people doing crazy things in spectacular places.
But the brands that I’d like to work with, that are currently doing a pretty good job, include Intel, which presents visuals of the amazing innovations that their products fuel.
Altra, the running shoe company, does a great job of making me wish I was outdoors running with their photography.
There is a hotel in Austin called the Hotel St. Cecilia that does a great job of presenting aspirational lifestyle images of scenes at their hotel (it is humbling to realize that I am not very cool). I tend to follow the smaller, upstart brands who are still very true to the DNA of who they are.
Heineken did an interesting stunt in 2014 around the U.S. Open, but I’m not sure they consistently show up well.
Netflix is currently running a promotion for someone to travel the world and post on their behalf, which could be interesting.
What Instagram blunders have you come across?
Huser: Not having a strategy. I don’t want to see images of your product. Work to align your brand with my lifestyle. A marketer’s content should have a purpose. Repurposed content on Instagram does not work.
If you do [have a strategy] and have compelling content, it could be your strongest media channel. Every follower will be an advocate.
COMMENTARY: Instagram continues to prove its mastery of the mobile domain, according to eMarketer’s latest internet usage forecast. This year, 89.4 million Americans will log on to Instagram at least once a month, representing 34.1% of mobile phone users. And by 2017, 51.8% of social network users will use Instagram—surpassing the 50% mark for the first time.
Instagram’s user base is growing far faster than social network usage in general. Instagram will grow 15.1% this year, compared to just 3.1% growth for the social network sector as a whole. Over the next four years, it will add 26.9 million users, almost double the incremental users expected for Twitter and far more than any other social platform eMarketer tracks.
Instagram usage is particularly strong among millennials. This year, there will be 48.2 million millennial Instagram users in the US. By 2019, nearly two-thirds of all millennial smartphone users will use Instagram.
eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson says.
“Instagram and its parent company, Facebook, know that mobile has changed the way people—especially millennials and Gen X-ers—communicate, share and get information. That's why they are leading the way in helping marketers reach this audience.”
The robust growth in users is helping to drive an increasing share of Facebook’s mobile ad revenues. This year, 9.5% of Facebook”s worldwide mobile ad revenues (20.1% in the US) will come from Instagram. By next year, Instagram’s share will grow to 14.0% globally (28.0% in the US).
Williamson says.
“Instagram has a lot of momentum with advertisers, and its revenue is increasing rapidly. For marketers that want to target mobile millennials, Instagram is an attractive option.”
What goes up must come down — and if it's a drone you're talking about, it often comes down in the most unfortunate ways possible.
It bounces off a tree trunk, smashes into a highway tunnel, or careens into the side of a building. It runs out of battery and falls into a body of water. Your four-figure investment is typically only as good as your ability to handle it once it's aloft — which is why I'm a bit anxious when I first take the controller for the Solo, which 3D Robotics is billing as the smartest drone ever.
Competition for that title gets tougher all the time: just last week, DJI announced Phantom 3, the next version of its best-selling consumer drone, with improved cameras and the ability to live-stream video from the drone to YouTube. But Solo represents a step forward in a few big ways: onboard computers in the controller and the drone, allowing for enhanced controls; full access to GoPro camera controls in flight (a first); and software that allows novices to create intricate multistep shots using just a couple taps. Solo also offers a level of customer support previously unheard of in the industry. 3DR will give you a 30-day money-back guarantee if your drone bores you and free replacement if Solo breaks while in flight.
The company is betting Solo will appeal to drone enthusiasts and novices alike — and that it can begin to chip away at the consumer drone market that the Phantom helped create. It is a critical time for 3DR, which has raised $85 million from investors.
3DR’s Colin Guinn says.
“We are a player, but we are the underdog player. How big of a defining moment is it? It is the moment. This is the introduction to the world of 3DR.”
3DR’s Colin Guinn shown flyig the new Solo drone (Click Image To Enlarge)
Meet the Guinnmeister
Guinn came to 3DR from DJI, where he was CEO of DJI's North American division. He helped lead design and marketing efforts for the Phantom, the Chinese company's hugely popular consumer model. Thanks in part to a series of popular YouTube videos where Guinn showed off the Phantom’s capabilities, he became well known to hobbyists. One drone blog continues to refer to him in headlines as "The Guinnmeister."
But Guinn's relationship with DJI executives in China soured over business terms, lawsuits were filed, and last February he decamped with his team for 3DR. (Guinn declines to comment on the lawsuit, which was settled.) Now at 3DR, Guinn's official title is chief revenue officer. But his role at the company is much larger than the bean-counter title suggests: the new Solo drone is hisbaby, 3.3 pounds of precision-engineered flying plastic robot.
"WE’RE BASICALLY GIVING PEOPLE A SUPERHUMAN POWER FOR A THOUSAND BUCKS."
And even all that doesn't really get at the main thing about Colin Guinn, which is that he isobsessed with drones. Because he once ran an aerial photography company, shooting scenes for Hollywood films, Guinn has an all-encompassing knowledge about how to make movies in the sky. When he speaks, what comes across is this overwhelming sense that to own a drone is to have a superpower — and that if you could only master that power, you could bend the universe a little more exactly to your will.
3D Robotics Solo Drone up close (Click Image To Enlarge
He mentions the history of comic book and fantasy characters who have the ability to see the world through the eyes of a bird. Guinn asks.
"What is the difference between those powers and Solo, with a high-definition video feed coming from the GoPro? We’re basically giving people a superhuman power for a thousand bucks."
3DR’s Colin Guinn smiles as he operates the Solo drone (Click Image To Enlarge)
It's time for me to try out my powers.
3D Robotics Solo Drone controller (Click Image To Enlarge)
Flying Solo
On a blustery day in Berkeley, California, we take a pre-production Solo unit onto the roof of 3DR headquarters. Guinn pops the drone out of a separately sold backpack and spins on the rotors. He snaps in the battery and attaches a GoPro to the gimbal. The whole process takes about 60 seconds.
3D Robotics Guinn uses a handheld controller to fly the Solo Drone (Click Image To Enlarge)
I pick up the controller and press a button marked "FLY." The rotors spin up, and suddenly Solo is safely in the air, hovering 10 or so feet off the ground. Autopilot keeps it roughly in place while I think about what to do next. We decide to shoot a selfie, a pre-scripted shot you can find in the app that runs on your tablet. With a couple taps, Solo zooms off into the sky, then slowly flies back in, keeping me perfectly in frame. We watch it all unfold on Guinn's iPad Mini, which snaps onto the controller and accesses most of Solo's functions. When it's all done, we save the video to the iPad's camera roll. If I wanted, I could post it to Instagram while I'm still flying.
The 3D Robotics controller includes toggles to control the flight of their Solo drone and an Apple iPad Mini (which snaps into a special slot) that displays what the drone's 12 megapixel camera is seeing while in flight (Click Image To Enlarge)
Solo does more complicated shots, too. A "cable cam" lets you set up a virtual line in the sky and then have Solo traverse it automatically, as if suspended on a wire. We use it to create dramatic shots that rise up above the railroad tracks next to 3DR headquarters and smoothly pan to reveal the San Francisco Bay behind us. 3DR is already seeding Solo units with filmmakers; Guinn says director Michael Bay's review of Solo, having used it once, was: "Fuuuuuck."
I'm no Michael Bay, though I'm pretty sure I could get the drone to explode if I could only figure out how to turn off the autopilot. Over a handful of 20-minute flights, I never even develop the muscle memory for what the control sticks do; I just fly Solo using trial and error. It's a luxury that most drones simply haven't afforded up until now; it helped me to relax and enjoy myself in a way I can't imagine being possible even a year ago.
Toward the end of one flight, while trying to get a shot, I find myself walking backward while keeping my eyes focused on Solo overheard. THUNK. I trip over a small HVAC unit on 3DR's roof and fall flat on my ass. Various bits of plastic fly off the controller, and the battery comes loose, barely tethered to the unit.
I'm dazed, my video team is laughing, and Guinn is asking if I'm alright. And Solo? It's still humming away up above me, perfectly content in the 20 mph winds, ready to do whatever I ask, with 70 percent of its battery remaining. We reassemble the controller and land it safely with two button taps.
I crashed; the drone didn't. Score one for the robots.
A pair of 3D Robotics Solo drones being assembled by 3DR engineers (Click Image To Enlarge)
How it works
3DR is unveiling Solo today at the National Association of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas, and it will begin shipping in a few weeks. For a base price of $999, with an optional $399 gimbal for enhanced camera controls, Solo is the first drone to offer full control of a GoPro camera. (I asked GoPro what they liked so much about Solo, and they sent back a bone-dry statement that didn't really answer the question — I assume because they worried about offending their other partners.) But the integration turns out to be a big deal: with Solo you can start and stop recordings, or change the camera's frame rate or other settings while in flight. It's stuff filmmakers have been asking for forever.
Most drones use a single computer, located in the flying unit, and broadcast signals to it using a controller. Solo, on the other hand, has 1 Ghz processors in both the controller and the quadcopter. The processor on the quadcopter is devoted entirely to autopilot functions necessary to keep it aloft. Meanwhile, the controller serves as Solo's "frontal cortex," and operates higher-level functions — some of which will arrive through future software updates. (My favorite of these, which I used in a test unit, is a flight "rewind" feature — simply tap and hold the "pause" button, which normally functions as a kind of emergency brake, and Solo retraces its steps. It's expected to ship within 60 days from launch.)
"IT'S STUFF FILMMAKERS HAVE BEEN ASKING FOR FOREVER"
The Solo app will warn you when your battery is running low, flying home automatically to ensure you make it on time. (You can override the feature, but the controller will start vibrating until you land safely.) 3DR is also rolling out the world's most expansive customer service program for drone owners, for a product where service has been downright medieval. (Drone drop into the ocean? Sorry about that! Feel free to buy another.)
It's the first drone to offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you aren't satisfied with your purchase; you'll just have to complete a five-question survey, providing data 3DR will use to improve future versions. Meanwhile, a team of nearly 100 in-house technicians will respond to calls for help, using the data that Solo continuously logs during flights.
The Solo app detects crashes and will ask you if you want to submit a trouble ticket in the event something goes wrong. If it's your fault, 3DR will offer to sell you a refurbished unit at a lower cost. And if the flight logs show Solo was at fault, 3DR will replace your drone — along with your gimbal and GoPro, if they also perished — at no cost.
3D Robotics Solo drone with high resolution GoPro Hero 4 camera (Click Image To Enlarge)
Catching up to Phantom
Will all that be enough to make 3DR the biggest player in the game? We may soon find out. The company was founded in 2009 by Chris Anderson, the author and former editor of Wired, and engineer Jordi Muñoz. (Anderson had been inspired in part by a 2007 incident in which he crashed a camera-equipped, remote-control plane into a tree at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.) The pair met on a web forum Anderson created, DIY Drones, whose community had developed powerful open-source software for controlling flying objects. Today the company has 300 employees, with offices in Berkeley, San Diego, Tijuana, and Austin, Texas.
Last fall 3DR introduced a consumer drone named Iris+. But it has lagged in sales behind DJI and Parrot, according to estimates from Gartner Research. DJI sold an estimated $500 million in drones last year for professional and amateur use, focused on aerial photography and videography. (Last summer, its Phantom 2 Vision+ was The Verge's pick for best consumer drone.) The market for consumer drones is still well under $1 billion, according to Gartner.
But an FAA ruling in February finally gave explicit permission to what had previously been a legal gray area. And the cost of consumer drones is coming down, albeit slowly. The big three manufacturers are betting that if drones become a bit easier to use and develop an expanded range of applications, the market will grow more quickly.
"YOU PRESS THE BUTTON AND YOU GET THE SHOT."
Anderson says.
"As the product becomes more sophisticated, the users can become less sophisticated. In the same way the iPhone transformed the phone by turning it into a single button — all that complexity reduced to a single button — what Solo does is it takes all the complexity of flying and robots and data acquisition and turns it into what is effectively a single button. You press the button and you get the shot."
It's in that sense that 3DR sees the latest drones as the start of a new age in drones. Anderson says.
"The first era of our industry was getting robots to fly. It was super hard! But we got there. The next era was making them easier to fly. I think we all got there. The next era is not flying them at all — making it so that their intelligence can be so profound that you can almost not care about the vehicle itself."
3D Robotics Solo drone with high resolution Hero 4 camera (Click Image To Enlarge)
Life after gravity
For all the time I spend with Solo — I visited the team several times over the past six months, flying prototypes in Austin and Berkeley — I never see a true production model. Even days before Solo is set to premiere, the team is still refining the software and hardware. Guinn pays fanatical attention to the product, and he rattles off requests to the software team throughout my visits. ("He's killing me," one executive laments.)
In my tests, Solo performs mostly as we would hope. But Guinn fixates on a small tremor in the gimbal that might make captured footage less than butter-smooth, and while it's quite windy for my last flight, I can't help but notice that Solo sometimes has trouble staying still. Instead, it floats around in a roughly 3-foot cube, and I wonder how that might affect the footage I shoot. Meanwhile, it's hard to see what I'm shooting, because the glare is so bad on the iPad Mini. (Not Solo's fault, of course, but it does affect the user experience.)
FLYING SOLO IS A BLAST
Flying Solo is a blast, and yet I’m still not sure I see the regular use case for myself. Getting great shots requires travel, and bringing Solo with me on vacation will mean checking one more bag and lugging it around. There are only so many drone-shot selfies a person needs, no matter how fun they are to shoot. So while I’m convinced Solo will make it easier and more fun for novices to fly drones, I’m skeptical of how much it can broaden the market for drones beyond hobbyists and filmmakers.
Whether or not there’s space for three players in the consumer drone market or not, 3DR isn’t content to remain in third place. The Guinnmeister may not want to talk about his days at DJI — about the fact that the Solo, had he stayed at the company, would have been the Phantom 3 that was announced last week — but there's no doubt that he wants to win. He says.
"We’re an order of magnitude less well known than our bigger competitor But I think that’s all gonna change really soon."
He notes that Solo is launching in 10 countries and will be available at thousands of big-box retail locations, featured in giant kiosks with flight simulators. He says
"The world is about to know who 3DR is."
COMMENTARY: Took the opportunity to look at the DJI Phantom 3, and it is my opinion that the 3D Robotics Solo drone is going to give the Phantom 3 a run for its money. Both drone makers incorporate the "Come Home" capability and use iPads to view what the drone attached to the camera is looking it. However, the Phantom 3 lacks the one-touch button "FLY" button or auto-pilot capability of the 3DR. A big plus for the Phantom 3 is its 4K ultra-HD camera which is slowly becoming the new standard for video filming. The 3DR Solo incorporates the GoPro Hero 4 camera that takes 12 MP stills and can shoot video at 1080p and 120fps.
In my opinion, the DJI Phatom 3 is designed to be marketed to professional filmmakers while the 3DR Solo is designed for the amateur photographer/videographer. At the $1,000 starting price poiint, the 3DR Solo should do well with entry-level users and photographers. Either way, both are designed to meet the needs of their target markets and have features that will appeal to those markets. Checkout this video of the DJI Phamtom 3 and decide for yourself.
Courtesy of an article dated April 13, 2015 appearing in The Verge
A NEWLY RELEASED REPORT CONSIDERS THE PHOTO APP THE BEST MEDIA ACQUISITION OF THE LAST FIVE YEARS.
Instagram still has no way of embedding external links, but that hasn't stopped brands and retailers from embracing the photo-sharing platform. In fact, it's the social network that has seen the fastest growth, most engagement, and highest conversion from browser to shopper, according a report released Thursday from startup Olapic and research firm L2.
Despite Instagram's billion-dollar price tag, the report considers the photo app the best media acquisition of the last five years. (The worst? Tumblr, which is a sentiment starkly different from Adobe's Digital Index released two weeks ago.) As a case in point, the study touts the following statistics:
Engagement on Instagram is 15 times that of Facebook's, with users spending an average of 257 minutes per month.
Instagram receives 1,000 comments and 8,500 likes per second. That comes to 1.2 billion likes per day.
More than 16 billion photos have been shared to date, with an average of 55 million uploaded each day.
The number of users has increased 66% to 32 million users, the fastest growing of the top 10 mobile apps.
Instagram ads have helped retailers increase ad recall by 32% and brand message lift by 10%.
"The main message is that we're very bullish about Instagram as a social network brands should be focusing on."
Click Image To Enlarge
Olapic provides the technology that lets brands, including Pepsi, Coach, and Lancome, turn customers' Instagram photos into shoppable images. Sabria said the ability to embed links could help brands "capture part of the traffic Instagram has and driving that traffic to their sites," but could also lead to an increase in spam. Meanwhile, he said some brands have tried to make do by posting links that users manually copy and paste into a browser.
The report also noted characteristics of Instagram photos that work better for engagement versus e-commerce. For example, captions with question marks do a better job of engaging users whereas longer captions without question or exclamation marks perform better for retailers.
Click Image To Enlarge
The case studies of a few Olapic customers were also highlighted. For example, when Macy's decided to promote its Thanksgiving parade using Instagram, the retailer was able to increase engagement on its ads by 70 times compared with its non-sponsored posts in November and December, reaching up to 5.3 million people. In the two days following Thanksgiving, it gained 14,000 new followers, 75 times its average daily increase in the past month, and ended up with 42,000 new followers over two weeks.
COMMENTARY: Twitter marketing. Facebook marketing. Regular old marketing. Content marketing. The list of types of marketing that is prescribed to every marketing professional as if everyone knows everything all this intuitively continue to grow day in and day out.
Not to be left out, Instagram is staking its claim to the advertiser world that it should be part of their overall plan.
Why you ask? Well, there are some rather large numbers associated with the service. Couple that with the fact that it’s owed by Facebook and the marketing mind begins to spin at high speed.
Courtesy of an article dated February 13, 2014 appearing in Fast Company
Fortune 500 companies post photos on Instagram most frequently on Thursdays, according to a recent report by TrackMaven.
However, in terms of effectiveness (as measured as the number of total interactions per 1,000 followers), Thursdays are no better than any other day of the week for posting, the study found.
In general, Instagram engagement stays fairly consistent throughout the week, though there is a slight spike on Mondays and a slight dip on Sundays.
Click Image To Enlarge
Time of day is a similar story. Fortune 500 companies overwhelmingly put photos up on Instagram during business hours, with posts spiking between 3-4 PM EST.
However, Instagram engagement stays fairly consistent throughout the day and night. Posts during business hours are only 6% more effective than off-hour posts.
Click Image To Enlarge
Below, additional key findings from the report, which was was based on an analysis of the Instagram accounts of Fortune 500 companies.
Fortune 500 Instagram Adoption
24.6% of the Fortune 500 now have Instagram accounts (123 companies).
Of the 123 Fortune 500 companies that have registered Instagram accounts, 91% (112 companies) have made at least one post on Instagram.
The number of top brands opening Instagram accounts each month has increased consistently since the launch of the service.
Video
There has not been a dramatic adoption of video on Instagram by Fortune 500 companies yet. In the most recent 30-day period examined in the report, there were 1,792 photos posted by these brands and only 74 videos.
The average picture received 37 interactions per 1,000 followers, while videos lagged with an average of 24 interactions per 1,000 followers.
Hashtag Effectiveness
The report found a strong correlation between the number of hashtags used and effectiveness of an Instagram post.
Five hashtags seemed to be magic number for Fortune 500 brands. Posts with that many tags had the highest effectiveness (an average of 21.21 interactions per 1,000 followers).
Posts with more than five hashtags started to decline in effectiveness, though they were still more popular than posts with 1-4 tags.
Click Image To Enlarge
About the research: The report was based on an analysis of the 123 active Instagram accounts of Fortune 500 companies. TrackMaven examined all of the posts by these companies since the launch of Instagram through September 17, 2013.
Courtesy of an article dated September 30, 2013 appearing in MarketingProfs
Angood solved some of the problems that plague homemade pinholes: “The key moving part is the internal mechanism where the 120 film feeds into the empty spool. The mechanism has a slightly curved film plane to help ensure the exposures are evenly exposed,” she explains. “This is because when you have a flat film plane, light fall-off from centre to edge (caused by the increased distance from pinhole to edge, effectively increasing the focal ratio) causes the exposures at the edges and corners to be less than at the centre. This was the most complicated part of the design, but ultimately the most rewarding to get right.” (Click Image To Enlarge)
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MIX A PINHOLE CAMERA WITH A VINTAGE TWIN REFLEX, THEN CRAFT THE WHOLE THING OUT OF STIFF PAPER? WE DON’T KNOW, BUT WE’D SURE LIKE TO FIND OUT.
At a camera shop in Edinburgh, I spotted it: A vintage, bellowing lens camera with crystal clear glass and a pricetag within my reach. I’d been eBay-stalking these old beauties for months. Now, one was mine, complete with the original leather case and a few free rolls of film. For the next week, swapping 12-frame rolls in mud, mist, and high winds beneath nothing more than the tenuous shelter of my raincoat (and the infinite expanse of my wife’s patience), I experienced more fun taking photographs than I’d had in years. And when I finally got the photos developed, even my mistakes reminded me of the place and time.
The Videre pinhole camera is a celebration of vintage cameras, papercraft, and medium format film photography in one (Click Image To Enlarge)
The Videre is a pinhole camera by Kelly Angood, decorated with an intricate, cardboard twin lens reflex camera body (so it looks like a TLR, but it’s not). Like my bellowing lens camera, the Videre celebrates expensive, limited-exposure medium format film. But in every other way, it’s even more rudimentary. The pinhole camera is the world’s simplest camera, after all, consisting of little more than a hole in a box that allows light to strike the film. To take a photo, you essentially open up that hole, for anywhere from five seconds to several months. The results, however, can be impeccably detailed and wonderfully ephemeral.
What makes Angood’s creation so weird is how it’s mixed two styles of vintage camera into one exceptionally quirky cardboard construct--a construct that took a lot of love to make into a relatively high-performing camera (that, incidentally, has been designed to capture shots somewhere between 8 and 40 seconds). And at the same time, she solved an engineering problem that plagues most homemade pinhole cameras.
Kelly Angood’s Videre pinhole camera is decorated with a twin-lens reflex camera body to look like a TLR (Click Image To Enlarge)
Angood explains.
“The key moving part is the internal mechanism where the 120 film feeds into the empty spool. The mechanism has a slightly curved film plane to help ensure the exposures are evenly exposed. This is because when you have a flat film plane, light fall-off from centre to edge (caused by the increased distance from pinhole to edge, effectively increasing the focal ratio) causes the exposures at the edges and corners to be less than at the centre. This was the most complicated part of the design, but ultimately the most rewarding to get right.”
There are other premium touches, too, like a light-filtering red acrylic window that lets you check how many photos you have left, or a viewfinder that folds down onto itself--like a real TLR camera--even though that viewfinder actually has no practical purpose to a pinhole camera.
There are other premium touches, too, like a light-filtering red acrylic window that lets you check how many photos you have left, or a viewfinder that folds down onto itself--like a real TLR camera--even though that viewfinder actually has no practical purpose to a pinhole camera. (Click Image To Enlarge)
Angood explains.
“To me it’s really important to get these little features right. You’d never guess it but the leather texture on the camera body also took nearly a week to create through various (and highly analogue!) printing methods. “
Indeed, it’s Angood’s perfectionism for artifice that elevates the Videre beyond mere gimmick to a nostalgic reboot, a celebration of vintage cameras, papercraft, and medium format film photography in one. It’s not designed to make photography simple; it’s designed to make photography fun. And if you’d like to pre-order a Videre kit of your own, you’d better act fast, as the offer expires soon. It’ll run you about $40 on Kickstarter.
Portraits taken with the Videre pinhole camera (Click Images To Enlarge)
COMMENTARY: The Pop-Up Pinhole Project on crowdfunding site Kickstarter UK raised 35,165 pounds from 881 individuals. This far exceeded the goal of 15,000 pounds Congrats to Kelly Angood, the inventor of the Videre pinhole camera cardboard kit for exceeding goal. Let's hope that she can successfuly deliver the units on a timely basis. This is fun, new idea that could start a new tren in cardboard cutout products.
A Zink (zero ink) printer, a bit like Polaroid’s own, lets you print out sticky-backed images on demand (Click Image To Enlarge)
THE CAMERA’S DESIGNER HAS ENTERED INTO A CONTRACT WITH POLAROID TO DEVELOP THE CONCEPT.
When we last wrote about Socialmatic, the concept for a web-enabled instant camera that uploads your snaps to Instagram and prints them out using an on-board printer, it was but a twinkle in the eye of Italian inventor Antonio De Rosa. The patently ridiculous industrial design, which is based on Instagram’s iOS icon, seemed as technically impossible as it was functionally unnecessary. And it seemed even less likely to materialize after De Rosa’sIndiegogo campaign failed to raise funds necessary to produce the camera, last year.
Last year, the web-enabled instant camera called Socialmatic was but a concept (Click Image To Enlarge)
Yet it seems that Socialmatic hasn’t been relegated to the back pages of a portfolio just yet. This week, De Rosa announced a partnership with one C&A Licensing LLC, a company that licenses the Polaroid brand. According to a statement, C&A will help De Rosa bring the Socialmatic to market by early 2014. De Rosa said
“It’s been a long and difficult negotiation. This mix of hardware and software, together with our brand new photo social network will fill the gap between virtuality and reality.”
The 16GB camera will have an 18.5-inch-square screen (Click Image To Enlarge)
It will allow you to apply retro-ish filters to your photos before uploading them to Facebook, Instagram, or a yet-to-be-designed Socialmatic app
If you missed the first round of press coverage, Socialmatic is a 16GB camera with a 4-inch-wide screen. It lets you apply retro-ish filters to your photos before uploading them to Facebook, Instagram, or a yet-to-be-designed Socialmatic app. A Zink (zero ink) printer, a bit like Polaroid’s own, lets you print out sticky-backed images on demand.
The Zink printer does not use ink cartridges and uses technology similar to the Polaroid PoGo printer (Click Image To Enlarge)
Despite being deeply embedded in Instagram culture, Socialmatic has no affiliation with the social photo app. Which is incredibly strange--the face of the device is plastered with Instagram’s SLR camera logo, and every picture it prints out is accompanied by a QR code link to your Instagram account.
Socialmatic is piggybacking on the wild popularity of the Instagram brand, and unless it comes up against any legal problems, could fool a whole lot of people. Doubly so when you add a Polaroid endorsement into the mix--the value of those two brand associations alone are transforming Socialmatic into a legitimate product.
The deal also includes accessories, like this carrying case (Click Image To Enlarge)
De Rosa was hesitant to comment on what’s changed since he struck his deal with C&A. When asked if the deal had affected the design, he answered a cryptic,
“Could be. It depends on some technical situations.”
One of those technical situations could be the Zero Ink printing technology, which would drive the cost up. But according to De Rosa, the release date is still too far out to make a guess on Socialmatic’s price tag. He said assuringly (a previous estimate was $350).
“It will be for everyone.”
It’s a deeply zany idea--after all, isn’t this thing doing what your iPhone could do, minus the printing?--but the response has been massively positive online. For Polaroid enthusiasts, it hints at nostalgia while maintaining a foothold in the digital world. At the same time, Instagram users seem to love the idea as a way to bolster their street cred as legit artists. For tech geeks, the thing has the ironic allure of an instant collectible, with a name that already sounds dated. In an odd way, it might be the perfect addition to the snapshot-crazed market.
COMMENTARY: Socialmatic™ is a brand new instant camera designed to fill the gap between the virtual and real world.
Socialmatic™ utilizes the Android™ operating system for sharing images through social networks, Instagram, email and MMS, and represents a revolution in the social digital photography.
With Socialmatic™ users can:
Live the emotions;
Take a shoot;
Apply proprietary photo filters;
Post it on Socialmatic™ Network and/or share on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or send by Email or MMS;
Print it, add a comment, pull off the auto-adhesive strip and share it in the real world;
Follow the photo in real and virtual world thanks its own QR Code;
The Socialmatic™ Family:
Socialmatic™ has plans to design a complete family of camera's with different features and storage capabilities for every budget:
Click Image To Enlarge
Socialmatic™ Specifications:
4:3 size screen (not 4,3 Inches!)
at least 16 GB of internal memory
3G, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity
SH-HDC slot for external mass storage
GPS
Internal Printer
Optical Zoom
Proprietary filters
Android based OS
Sharing option to share your photo on the most famous Social Network, by email or MMS;
Exclusive Socialmatic Network Connectivity
Cost of Socialmatic™?
Not available yet, but will be affordable for everyone.
The Socialmatic camera may just be the shot in the arm that the digital camera market needs to be rejuvenated, after years of declining sales as the smartphone, equipped with built-in camera's, has replaced regulat digital camera's.
Having said this, I believe that there will be demand for the Socialmatic camera, but it will not be a game-changer, like the iPhone was to smartphones, or the iPod was to portable digital music players, but will appeal to a smaller group of photography enthusiasts who want the ability to produce instant hardcopy photos and the ability to share them with their friends through email, text messages and social networks.
How large the market for the Socialmatic camera will become will depend largely on the addition of apps to provide additional photographic functionality and improvements to the overall photographic experience. 3-D photography would be a huge plus. Price will also be a big determinant. I do wish Antonio de Rosa and Polaroid a lot of luck.
Courtesy of an article dated March 15, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design
Instagram users annoyed with new rules, carried out their threats to dump the popular photo-sharing app. The app acquired by Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) earlier this year for $1 billion, has lost nearly a quarter of its daily active users owing to the debacle.
“[We are] pretty sure the decline in Instagram users was due to the terms of service announcement” on Dec. 17, AppData told The Post.
As per the data, Instagram’s active daily users had fallen to 12.4 million as of yesterday, from the peak of 16.4 million the week it rolled out its policy change, according to The New York Post. The number is equal to a 25% drop, which would mean a $250 million loss for Facebook. The company changed its service terms last week to incorporate advertising. The new terms allowed the company to sell user photos for advertising and promotions “without any compensation to you.” It is impossible to tell if the new terms of service put in place by Instagram came from inside the company, from Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), or was the product of a dialogue between the two companies.
The move caught mass resentment, with celebrities including Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber expressing outrage. Though Bieber withdrew his threat to leave, but as of yesterday Kardashian, the most followed user, hadn’t posted a picture of herself since the debacle.
David Fewer, director of the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa.“Those online service providers are asking for something in return,”
COMMENTARY: Instagram created quite an uproar with its users when on Monday, December 17, 2012 it released an updated version of its privacy policy and terms of service, and they included lengthy stipulations on how photographs uploaded by users may be used by Instagram and its parent company, Facebook. The proposed changes were part of Facebook's marketing strategy to monetize Instagram by adding advertising.
The most significant changes in Instagram’s privacy policy and terms of service included:
Instagram can share information about its users with Facebook, its parent company, as well as outside affiliates and advertisers. Instagram said that the changes to its privacy policy are a means to help Instagram “function more easily as part of Facebook by being able to share info between the two groups.” The potentially lucrative move will let advertisers in Facebook’s ad network use data and information that users have shared on Instagram, like details about favorite places, bands, restaurants or hobbies, to better target ads at those users.
You could star in an advertisement — without your knowledge. A section of the new terms of service, titled “Rights,” notes that Instagram will also be able to use your photographs and identity in advertisements. “You agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you,” the new terms say. This means that photographs uploaded to Instagram could end up in an advertisement on the service or on Facebook. In addition, someone who doesn’t use Instagram could end up in an advertisement if they have their photograph snapped and shared on the service by a friend. Facebook already runs ads that make use of people’s activity on its site. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington, said that the use of a person’s likeness in ads could run into some state laws protecting people’s privacy. Mr. Rotenberg said. “Most states have laws that limit the use of a person’s ‘name or likeness’ for commercial purposes without consent,” The legal purpose is to allow people to obtain the commercial value of their images and endorsements, which is a big issue for celebrities and others, but also a reasonable concern for Facebook users whose images are used by Facebook to encourage friends to buy products and services.”
Underage users are not exempt. Athough Instagram says people must be at least 13 years old to sign up for the service, the new terms note that if a teenager signs up, they are agreeing that a parent or guardian is aware that their image, username and photos can also be used in ads.
Ads may not be labeled as ads. In another section of the updated terms, the company says ads will not necessarily be labeled as ads. “You acknowledge that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such,” the company wrote.
Want to opt out? Delete your account. The only way to opt out of the new Instagram terms is to not use the service. If you log into Instagram in any way, including through the Web site, mobile applications or any other services offered by Instagram, you agree to have your content used in ads. Instagram’s new terms of service say that “by accessing or using the Instagram website, the Instagram service, or any applications (including mobile applications) made available by Instagram (together, the “Service”), however accessed, you agree to be bound by these terms of use.”
No wonder Instagram users revolted and Instagram backedoff. The changes, which were to go into effect Jan. 16, 2013, will not apply to pictures shared before that date.
It's now back to the drawing board for Instagram. I have a feeling that Instagram will offer premium photo posts for users who want to promote a particular picture.
Courtesy of an article dated December 26, 2012 appearing in ValueWalk and an article dated December 17, 2012 appearing in BITS
Software created by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology amplifies variations in video that are imperceptible to the naked eye, making it possible to exaggerate tiny motions. More telling, it could provide greater credibility for products.
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory graduate student Michael Rubinstein designed the software, along with recent alumni Hao-Yu Wu, Eugene Shih and professors William Freeman, Fredo Durand and John Guttag. The researchers initially intended it to amplify color changes, but in their experiments found it amplified motion as well. The software makes visible the vibrations of individual guitar strings, or the ability to see someone's pulse as the skin reddens and pales with the flow of blood. The new technology could assist online agency executives in creating more attention-grabbing advertising based on MIT's research on amplified emotions.
Eric Gulino, an ad executive at Skiver Advertising, said having the ability to see change without computer-generated graphics could increase the credibility of products because it would not require computer-generated art. He said it is not likely to revolutionize the way agencies create content, but it will open the door to demonstrate things not easily communicated and give consumers a whole new appreciation for products.
Take a car manufacturer, for example. Gulino said. "Maybe the manufacturer had trouble communicating the effectiveness of technology in the car that takes over just before a crash,""The seatbelts might tighten. The brakes are applied and the airbag deployed. It's difficult to show it in real-time. It just looks like a crash."
Rather than a simulation, the manufacturer would show the event as it happens, giving the brand more credibility. Simulation would have been the only way to demonstrate a high-speed crash. Gulino said.
"This technology opens up new avenues for creative folks. It removes the fog from a consumer's perspective."
In a set of experiments, the software amplifies the movement of shadows in one frame of a street sequence photographed only twice, at an interval of about 15 seconds. Amplifying motion rather than color requires a different processing. The smaller the motion, the better it works.
Most of the research has been around imaging and monitoring medical conditions, such as in video baby monitors for the home, so that the respiration of sleeping infants would be clearly visible.
Agencies rarely work with universities like MIT. GroupM has begun to look into the idea, but doesn't work with researchers at the university yet. The ad industry already has a host of tools to create special effects, but even Needham Analyst Laura Martin agrees that
"Academic research demonstrates that diversity maximizes economic value."
While Martin refers to the TV ecosystem, her report on "The Future of TV: The Invisible Hand" highlights the need for more creativity in TV and video content.
COMMENTARY: MIT's technical abstract describes the new video amplification technology as follows:
"Our goal is to reveal temporal variations in videos that are difficult or impossible to see with the naked eye and display them in an indicative manner. Our method, which we call Eulerian Video Magnification, takes a standard video sequence as input, and applies spatial decomposition, followed by temporal filtering to the frames. The resulting signal is then amplified to reveal hidden information. Using our method, we are able to visualize the flow of blood as it fills the face and also to amplify and reveal small motions. Our technique can run in real time to show phenomena occurring at temporal frequencies selected by the user."
Click Image To Enlarge
You can download a PDF file of the technical whitepaper describing MIT's Eulerian Video Magnification technology by clicking HERE.
Courtesy of an article dated June 22, 2012 appearing in MediaPost Publications Online Media Daily
Call it Facebook Halo Effect, if you will. Instagram’s growth from 30 million users in April 2012, to 80 million users today--an astounding increase of 50 million users in only three months. The user growth at Instagram probably validates Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision to acquire the startup for the staggering price of $1 billion on the eve of its IPO.
The mobile-only app is therefore adding users at a scorching average of 10 million users per month! The news comes in handy for acquirer, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), who reported a somewhat disappointing quarter – it’s first as a public company.
Instagram has also revealed that almost 4 billion images have been shared since the platform’s launch back in October 2010. It may be interesting to look at Instagram’s announcement below:
“We’re excited to announce that the Instagram community has grown to over 80 million registered users who have shared nearly 4 billion photos! Since we launched Instagram in October 2010, we’ve expanded from one platform to two, bringing Instagram to Android users as well as iOS users. As the community has grown, we’ve seen people sharing photos from all around the world, from South Korea to Bolivia, and even underwater!
We’re humbled by the amazing photos from people’s lives we see every day on Instagram, and thank you for being part of this growing community.
The Instagram Team”
And therein lies the clue. The app has spread its wings from being just an iPhone app, to also including Android, thereby covering the best of both worlds.
One of the main concerns with Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has been its perceived difficulties with monetizing the rapidly growing mobile user base. Instagram could start playing a very large role here, as it could be the catalyst for pushing Facebook’s mobile initiatives, be they advertising or ecommerce, into user consciousness.
Meanwhile, it appears that “Twitter has changed API restrictions for Instagram, and has eliminated the “Find Your Friends” feature that Instagram previously offered,” according to this news on SlashGear. There is an opinion that this may have been done on bandwidth considerations, but quite possibly it could also be Twitter paying Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) in kind for blocking Twitter’s access to Facebook’s Friend Finder feature in June 2010.
COMMENTARY: In a blog post dated April 11, 2012, I commented on Facebook's acquisition of Instagram, a mobile photo sharing startup, with 30 million users and zero revenues, for an astounding $1 billion Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom wanted $2 billion, but Mark Zuckerberg said no. The Instagram acquisition is Facebook's largest to date. If you compare Google+ vs Instagram imagery, I really see no significant difference. Honestly, I don't know what all the hubbub is about. Instagram is not a breakthrough photo sharing app. I've seen Instagram images appear in both Facebook and Twitter newstreams, but when are they going to start making money off of Instagram? Zuck needs to get hammering, develop a strategy for monetizing mobile, or we are going to see Facebook's stock go under 20.
Courtesy of an article dated July 27, 2012 appearing in ValueWalk
Google+ is succeeding in small bursts, feature by feature. As a social network competing with Facebook it’s a flop, but its video-chat tool Hangouts is a winner. Now photo sharing is poised to be the service’s next breakout hit, thanks to an enthusiastic community of photographers who like the focus on attractive full-size images, Google+’s new photo-centric iPhone app, and a uniquely Google passion for metadata.
In fact, Google+ is pushing hard on the photography front and is in a great position to dominate the floundering Flickr.
Bradley Horowitz V.P of Product for Google+talked about the future of photography and how Hangout in Real Life (HIRL) can help professional photographers (Click Image To Enlarge)
The Google+ team teamed up with Kelby Training for a two-day Google+ Photographers Conference in San Francisco, or as it was adorably called, a HIRL — Hangout in Real Life. Vice president of product for Google+ Bradley Horowitz (pictured above), who led Yahoo’s purchase of Flickr in 2005, kicked off the event Tuesday by talking about the future of photography, how Flickr changed his outlook, and whether ads will ever make an appearance in Google+.
A camera that records your blood pressure
Horowitz said.
“I feel photos are the lifeblood of our service. They are the way we can most immediately and viscerally connect as human beings.”
For the past four-plus years, Horowitz has pushed his passion for “social computing” at Google: combining photos, algorithms, and human interaction. While some of us may see the rising flood of images and data — from camera settings to GPS location — as overwhelming, Horowitz sees it as an opportunity. He thinks the future lies in capturing even more data, sharing more information, having more sensors, and recording more dimensions.
For example, we generate so much information that going through it to find gems is becoming more and more difficult. Ironically, even more data can be used to bring order to overload.
Horowitz said.
“I want to know everything I can about the environment. I would like to know more detailed information about the roll, pitch, yaw of the camera. About the lens optics, about even the blood pressure of person whose hand is on the camera, even the galvanic skin response.”
These biological markers can be used to identify the special and meaningful moments in your life worth remembering, such as the happiness you felt seeing your kid take her first steps.
Tools like Google’s own Google Glass could be a great start for capturing all of this information, but of course there are a few kinks to be worked out first.
Horowitz said of Google’s Vic Gundotra, who sometimes sports the augmented reality glasses during meetings.
“I never know whether Vic is listening to me or not.”
We are capable of so much more than Instagram
Capturing pixels is just the beginning of a photo. How it’s processed and used after it’s on a computer is becoming even more important. Google has multiple properties that dabble in photos, including Picasa, Google+, Drive, and even email. The next step is to combine those tools together, something Horowitz admits is still an issue.
Horowitz in response to a question about the difference between Picasa and Google+ said.
“Ultimately the brand distinction between those needs to go away… we’re working hard to erase the seams between these experiences. The fact that you have to ask it is a failing on our part.”
Eventually Google aims to blur the line between the device and the cloud, so all the data you generate is automatically backed up, archived, and secured in a nice non-obtrusive manner. Automating this synthesizing stage would free up time for photographers to focus on the more enjoyable process of manipulating the data.
Horowitz wants to increase the power its own post-processing tools, making image editors scalable so that an amateur can use them as easily as a professional photographer. Replacing the very segmented image editing market and creating a tool that is equal parts Instagram, Lightroom, and Photoshop is an especially ambitious (perhaps naive) idea.
Google wants you to think of ads as little presents
The absence of ads in Google+’s lightbox, the tool that shows your images, is part of what appeals to the many photographers who use the service. But certainly it’s only a beta perk, right? After all, a whopping 96 percent of Google’s revenue comes from advertising. Google’s philosophy when it comes to ads is that they can be a very useful part of the user experience (as they are in search results). However, it doesn’t want to serve them where or when they don’t belong and won’t be the most effective.
Horowitz said.
“We don’t think of ads as punishments the users must endure, we think of ads done well as something that users would cry over if we took them away.”
The company has not yet found a way to make ads useful in the lightbox. Horowitz says.
"If a Google+ user is looking at photos of their family, the last thing you want to do is stick an ad between that intimate moment and intimate interaction.”
Instead, Google leans more towards collecting data and delivering it when the context and time are right.
For example, say you review a restaurant. Google will tuck that information away and deliver it when it is relevant, perhaps six months later when one of your friends looks for a restaurant recommendation in the same area. Horowitz says.
“That’s a gift from me to that person facilitated by Google.”
And it all started with Flickr
Horowitz has a background in photography, like many others on the Google+ team. Horowitz says.
“We are geeks, and photographer geeks are a sub-flavor of geeks.”
As a grad student, Horowitz worked on some of the earliest image-processing programs and algorithms that analyzed images.
Eventually he landed at Yahoo as the head of multimedia search, which is where he met the founders of Flickr, a “fascinating, tiny little company in Canada.” They asked why, instead of writing complex algorithms to analyze images, he didn’t just ask people to volunteer their knowledge, à la Flickr’s tagging? People can just look at an image and say if it’s a dog, a person, or even if its funny or snarky.
Horowitz said.
“I realized my algorithms were so far from having a snarky detector that this was a better approach. A little bit of social engineering was better than all the algorithmic approach… it introduced the concept of bringing people and community into the equation.”
Horowitz went on to oversee Yahoo’s acquisition of Flickr, and eventually moved on from the company. But now, many years later, the idea of social computing that Flickr planted in his head is being used to turn Google+ into real Flickr competitor.
COMMENTARY: the new Google+ for iPhone app sports a crip look, and a dramatic image- and video-centric design rich with color. The design offers a content consumption experience ripe with personality. Status updates look more like art and flow on to the screen in a smooth and soothing fashion.
Google+ App for iPhone images taken using the iPhone are bigger, crisper with more readible type (Click Image To Enlarge)
And Android owners fear not, a similar Android version with a “few extra surprises” is said to be coming in a few weeks. I am happy as hell to here that!!
The application looks and feels like a whole new Google+ — just not a whole new social network. In fact, it seems to encapsulate much of the elements of today’s contemporary mobile social applications. It especially echoes the photo-centric qualities of private social network Path and social news app Flipboard, and we’d be remiss in our duties if we didn’t mention the overlap between this app and the storytelling, visual, and emotional aspects of Facebook’s Timeline.
POTUS looks sharp on the Apple iPhone using the Google+ App for iPhone
Google senior vice president Vic Gundotra said this about the new Google+ app .
“We’re embracing the sensor-rich smartphone (with its touchable screen and high-density display), and transforming Google+ into something more intimate, and more expressive. Content so immersive it remakes your mobile device into a rich carousel of beloved memories and breaking news.”
What’s new? A smattering of updates including larger profile pictures, crisper fonts, +1 image overlays, and other user interface and visual elements that should make the experience feel more fluid and more enjoyable.
I have always felt that Google+'s large audience of tech geeks, especially photographers, offers Google+ a great opportunity to capitalize on that audience. I can clearly see where Google+ can become a Digital Hub, similar to what Apple has down with iCloud with iPhone and iPad users. This is the sort of thing that I have been juiced up over since Google+ came upon the seen. This is the time for it to bring the rest of its apps into that Digital Hub. I had previously called Google+ a "Social Hub," but not it is juiced with with a powerful and very useful Digital Hub capability that brings real value to photographers using Google+.
Courtesy of an article dated May 22, 2012 appearing in VentureBeat
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