100 grams (Instagrams that is)

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by on February 7, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Eric Friedman, Startups

I noticed recently that I have posted 100+ Instagram photos since I started – http://instagram.com/ericfriedman. It’s been quite a ride for them and I will leave commentary on the Company up to others. On the personal side it’s been a fun ride as well and I thought I would take stock.

I find myself browsing and interacting (read “liking”) way more than I am posting. There is no aggregate place where I can see my likes, or likes I have “given” but I think it’s high. This might be available through the API.  Its been great getting Timehop emails reminding me of past photos though!

I have posted 100 photos (heavily skewed towards my dog!) and don’t see much rhyme or reason to my instagramming habits. I also have inverse prediction abilities when it comes to the traction of my photos. Some that I think are cool don’t get much attention, and others that I think are fleeting get a very high interaction rate.  I am reminded of what Fred Wilson wrote about service and user engagement “rules”  and I definitely find that I interact “lurk” more.  I believe I have hundreds of interactions, while only 100+ direct contributions of original content.  FWIW I have also connected my account to 9 other services (giving read/write options)

One of my primary use cases of Instagram is using it to post a photo and check in on Foursquare at the same time. No surprise here as I work at Foursquare, but it certainly serves a need I have. I love the ability to “snap once and cross post as I choose”.  I mainly share to Foursquare with almost every photo, as associating a real place has a lot of value to me.  Every now and again I push to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr too – no connection to Flickr yet.

When the world map opened up sometime last year I was at first a little amazed at all the places I took photos.  On the “open” side of the privacy debates I embraced the feature, but was definitely interested to see if I cared about sharing all photos.  I have since left sharing on, and shared almost all the photos on the map.  I have not gone back yet to look, but I am hoping the exif data becomes valuable to me in the future.

 

Posted by Eric Friedman on February 7, 2013

http://www.ericgfriedman.com/2013/02/07/100-grams-instagrams-that-is/

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  • http://spencerfry.com/ Spencer Fry

    Instagram never really interested me. I used it very early on, but felt as if everyone was trying to hard to frame the perfect artsy photograph. It made me kind of sick. Maybe things have changed since then, but I haven’t gone back and don’t intend to.

  • http://www.matmullen.com/ Mat Mullen

    I really like the integration that Instagram has with Foursquare. One of my favorite features is adding a location to a new photo and then clicking on the actual location to see all the photos that other people have added. It’s especially helpful when I’m at a restaurant and don’t know what to order. Text reviews are alright, but seeing an image of the final product is even better…especially when it comes to Sushi.

    It’s a great example of combining two services and getting a real utility from both. Now Foursquare just needs to start pulling in those location photos back into their app and then I’ll start using it more often to recommend restaurants and places to see.

  • http://www.ericgfriedman.com/ Eric Friedman

    How would you best envision pulling the photos back? If you post to instagram as a check in we actually do capture the photo but maybe you are talking about something else?

  • http://www.ericgfriedman.com/ Eric Friedman

    I felt differently at first, but its worth checking out again

  • http://www.matmullen.com/ Mat Mullen

    I’m more talking about pulling in all the photos associated with the location, not just with people checking in. I have no idea what percentage of users tag a location but then do not check-in with Foursquare via Instagram, but I know I typically fall into that bucket.

  • http://www.ericgfriedman.com/ Eric Friedman

    Thats a great point. I would love to have that data, but without explicit sharing I think it would not be available.