Facebook’s $ 1billion Instagram purchase - a positive push for other photo apps?

Last week Facebook announced that they have acquired Instagram for one billion dollars. The acquisition has created some turbulence among many of the Instagram users, who are now looking for other photos apps to try out.

Instagram is a photo sharing app, where you can snap a photo and share it with your friends. The app has made it super easy for the users to prettify their photos through using filters and this has most probably been the key factor for their success. The team has gone through a fantastic one-year-journey and managed to build up a community consisting of 30 million Instagramers world wide. 10 million additional members have joined Instagram since the Facebook acquisition. 

There is no doubt that the user-growth will continue to explode. However, many “power users” of Instagram have started to feel fear for how the development will continue after the purchase, and are thereby looking for other similar services. They do not only fear for what will happen with the photo rights, or with possible future advertisement within the app, but also that the large mass of new members, who joins through Facebook, will lower the quality of all the photos within the community. 

-Instagram started as a community for people who loves photography and we are afraid that it will loose its soul now when Facebook has bought it. The last thing we want to happen is to see a strongly reduced focus from photography and see Instagram becoming a huge Facebook-like community, says Helena Friberg who is a very engaged Instagram user. 

Ongoing discussions among Instagram users can be followed under tags like #keepigthesame and #fuckfacebook at Instagram. Josh Johnson, who with his 110 000 followers has become one of the most popular Instagram users, took the acquisition seriously and wrote a letter to Marc Zuckenberg, the founder of Facebook:

“... please understand Mark that numbers are not what makes IG special . What makes IG special is community. A group of people that have come together with a shared passion. We are fascinated with IG because we love pictures. It's really that simple. We love taking them. We love looking at them. We love talking about them...”

The market is flooded with photo applications, and the start up Foap hopes to become a success by enable their users to earn money on their photos in a smooth and fun way.  

-We don’t believe that Facebook will do any radical changes, specially in the beginning, since it can be very sensitive for an already great working community. However, we must admit that it is great to hear that Instagram users are looking for other qualitative photo apps, says Alexandra Bylund, co-founder of Foap.

- Since the photos need to be approved it will hopefully increase the quality of our community, and we believe that engaged photographers and amateur photographers will love the atmosphere, says Alexandra.

Foap is launching within a few weeks and even though their purpose has never been to compete with Instagram, this could be a great push for their success. Now it remains to see what Facebook will do with Instagram, and then the user’s respond...

Josh Johnsons' letter to Mark Zuckerberg:

"Dear Mark.

Welcome to IG. You made a very smart move buying this community. I've been here for a while so if you don't mind I'll give you some advice on what I think we are about (says the guy with the itty bitty bank account to the dude with billions) .

What makes IG a billion dollar community? I'm sure you've crunched all the numbers, made lots of graphs and charts, but please understand Mark that numbers are not what makes IG special . What makes IG special is community. A group of people that have come together with a shared passion. We are fascinated with IG because we love pictures. It's really that simple. We love taking them. We love looking at them. We love talking about them .

Keep this in mind Mark and IG will continue to flourish. It's about the pictures. We don't want to check in. We don't want to post a status update. All we want is to create and share pictures. Help us with that and you'll make a lot of friends here .

Let's talk copyright. This is a religious issue for a lot of people Mark. Don't mess around here. The image rights belong to the photographer, end of story .

Good luck. I've never spent a billion dollars on anything. It must be stressful. I'm sure Instagram has many more exciting years ahead. Just remember that this community revolves around pictures."