Instagram has been a hot topic in the news this past week and a half. The extremely popular and free phone app recently became available on Android phones after being strictly for Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) since it debuted in October 2010. Then the bomb dropped this past Tuesday, April 9, when it was announced that Facebook purchased Instagram for one billion dollars. All the current Instagram news has fans of the fun, popular photo sharing app in a tailspin. So what is Instagram and why is the public in an uproar over the latest news?
Simply put, Instagram is a form of social media that allows users to apply digital filters (scroll through photos to see an example) to photos, think along the lines of giving a photograph an old nostalgic look, enhancing the color, going black and white, and much more. Instagram allows users to follow people, share pictures (yes, with comments and likes enabled) on their site and the sites of social media bigwigs Facebook and Twitter.
Should Instagram be kept just on Apple devices? Of course not. Instagram was bound to grow past the iPhone and family and they did.
Facebook’s major purchase has folks worried that Instagram will change even though Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims he is committed to independently building and growing Instagram. Unfortunately no one believes Zuckerberg will keep his word since Facebook has a history of acquiring brands and changing what made them popular in the first place.
For now, let’s all enjoy Instagram for what attracted us to it in the first place, its simplicity, fun factor, and the fact that it’s free. We have no idea how long THAT will last.
Grand Central photo by Andrew Dominick and Instagram