Instagram bets Facebook in search of more Likes Just yesterday, the popular iOS only photo sharing network, Instagram, announced they were updating how Instagram shares images with Facebook. Alexia Tsotsis reported on this for TechCrunch as well. Under the new features, Instagram will create a Instagram Photos album on your Facebook and upload full size images there as well as a link to the public Instagram URL—all advertised to look “beautiful” on timeline, and it does. The goal of this? To tag onto Facebook’s viral network effects. Tsotsis puts it well when she surmises, “it’s almost like Facebook is functioning here as an ad hoc web interface, no?” Yes, an ad hoc web interface with 800+ million users and a storied history of taking big services and inflating them rapidly (read: Spotify). Thing is, I’m a fan of my relatively small Instagram network built of amateur photographers. Occasionally I will tweet out an image, but the reason I don’t post any photos to Facebook is because my network there is too bulky, clumsy, awkward and renegade. Instagram is full of people interested in photography and who are willing to look at my amateur attempts at capturing the world and offer me feedback. It’s safe and comforting because, for the most part, we’re all doing the same thing. Facebook is the social networking wasteland—a saturated landscape of outlaws and villains—full of people clicking, sharing, liking and propagating content without real insight or understanding (slight dramatization). Sometimes it is best to take a step back into a colony where culture, thought, and trends have a focused center.  Small network enclaves win out right now. That’s why Path and Instagram—my networks with the smallest numbers but most legitimate interaction—win out right now. I don’t want Facebook to pollute that, no matter how many more likes my photos might receive or how beautiful my timeline can look.
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Instagram bets Facebook in search of more Likes

Just yesterday, the popular iOS only photo sharing network, Instagram, announced they were updating how Instagram shares images with Facebook. Alexia Tsotsis reported on this for TechCrunch as well.

Under the new features, Instagram will create a Instagram Photos album on your Facebook and upload full size images there as well as a link to the public Instagram URL—all advertised to look “beautiful” on timeline, and it does. The goal of this? To tag onto Facebook’s viral network effects. Tsotsis puts it well when she surmises, “it’s almost like Facebook is functioning here as an ad hoc web interface, no?” Yes, an ad hoc web interface with 800+ million users and a storied history of taking big services and inflating them rapidly (read: Spotify).

Thing is, I’m a fan of my relatively small Instagram network built of amateur photographers. Occasionally I will tweet out an image, but the reason I don’t post any photos to Facebook is because my network there is too bulky, clumsy, awkward and renegade.

Instagram is full of people interested in photography and who are willing to look at my amateur attempts at capturing the world and offer me feedback. It’s safe and comforting because, for the most part, we’re all doing the same thing.

Facebook is the social networking wasteland—a saturated landscape of outlaws and villains—full of people clicking, sharing, liking and propagating content without real insight or understanding (slight dramatization). Sometimes it is best to take a step back into a colony where culture, thought, and trends have a focused center. 

Small network enclaves win out right now. That’s why Path and Instagram—my networks with the smallest numbers but most legitimate interaction—win out right now. I don’t want Facebook to pollute that, no matter how many more likes my photos might receive or how beautiful my timeline can look.