5/06/2015

Headline May 07, 2015/ ''' THE INSTAGRAM SHOT '''


''' THE INSTAGRAM SHOT '''




SOCIAL MEDIA PROPERTIES can often be like nightclubs. They are cool while the trendy people are there, and they disappear without leaving a trace. No trace then, whatsoever.

In fact, Facebook has tremendous value to Instagram, say Krieger and Systrom. The company leans heavily on Facebook's  spam-and fraud prevention team, for example.

And Krieger, who is thinking a good deal about management these days, calls regularly on an executive coach Facebook provides to help navigate the sorts of challenges that emerge when your workforce increases by factor of 10.

The first real test of Instagram's autonomy came three months after the acquisition. Facebook suggested that Istagram revise its terms of service, allowing the company to access users photos for advertising purposes without asking or notifying them.

Instagram went ahead with the policy change. The terms announced late on a Monday and Systrom and Krieger woke up to a storm of outrage the next morning. They watched as account deletions soared. ''That was a scary moment. I thought, Did we just kill Instagram?'' says Systrom.

Kriger immediately convened Instagram's executive team, while Systrome met with Zuckerberg, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, and the legal team.

''Let's roll it back,'' Systrom urged them. They tried to persuade him to stick with the change, says Systrom. But he argued that with no immediate plans to add advertising to the platform, it wasn't worth alienating users. They could revisit the issue later.

''It took a while for people to get comfortable with it, but I was pretty adamant that would work,'' says Systrom. He published a blog post rolling back the terms of service, and the account-deletions stopped.

The users had spoken. Instagram had listened. And Facebook had, as promised, stayed out of the way.

Snapchart hired social media theorist Nathan Jurgenson to study why people take disappearing photos. Facebook works with researchers to inquire as to the psychology of status updates.

By contrast, Instagram hands out stickers. The company has a nine person team that encourages community. It maintains Instagram's corporate blog, which is as much an industry rag for people like Skinny as it is a vehicle for announcing the occasional business update.

When the global InstaMeet happened, the company sent kits to all the organizers it could identify. The kits included a massive red balloon as a prop and a bunch of stickers with the company's name on them.

So why, exactly, has Instagram become so popular so fast?  A survey of academics, photographers, and investors suggests its rise corresponds with a larger shift to a more visual style of communication.

People want to share photo to describe their life experiences. This became evident when Facebook bested Myspace, then the dominant social network, in part because its technology made it easier for users to upload and share photos.

In 2007 the launch of the iPhone made it substantially easier {and more fun} to take and share pictures. Systrom and Kreiger's service took the evolution a step further. 

Indeed, beyond the comparison to Kodak's popularization of photography decades ago  (which would apply to smartphones as well as to Instagram), the photo-sharing service has a second analogue, one that may be even more important: iTunes.

Where for decades the technical quality of a photo (or the sound quality of a song) gained ever more importance, all of a sudden, with the advent of iTunes and Instagram, the quality of  distribution trumped all. 

To audio purists {and anybody with good ears}, iTunes has second rate sound. But the the ease of distribution made it a global hit.

So it was with Instagram, with a twist: By adding simple editing tools like filters, Instagram let mainstream web users become  -or at least do an impression of  -good photographers.

Regular people were now able to manipulate their photographs to reflect ideas and feelings.

Many professional photographers were horrified. Suddenly anybody could be a photographer. What's more, Instagram helped take jobs from the professionals. Just over two years ago:

The Chicago Sun-Times fired its entire staff of photographers and trained its journalists to take and edit photos on their iPhones and upload them to the appropriate social feeds.

The Honour and Serving of the  ''technology operational research'' continues.

With respectful dedication to all the Social's Biggest Players : Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, Google, Pinterest. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:


''' Users Of Media Services '''

'''Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

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