Written by Kid Noble, Tech Dude, The Cubicle Chick.com Contributor
If you are an iPhone user, chances are you’ve heard of the application called “Instagram.” Instagram promotes itself as a ” … free, fun, and simple way to make and share gorgeous photos …” and has millions of downloads. For those who have no experience with it, it’s almost like Twitter, but with pictures. You can follow your friends (or strangers!) and their pictures that they post will appear on your public timeline.
The application also offers different filters and effects to enhance your photos. After fine-tuning all of your pictures, you can upload them onto your stream, and also share them with your Twitter and Facebook friends. It’s simple, and it’s enjoyable, featuring monthly photo challenges, giving users a theme for each day of the month to shoot a picture for.
On April 3, Instagram officially opened it’s doors to the Android world. Following that release, Instagram saw approximately 1 million downloads within the first 12 hours. That’s in addition to the over 30 million downloads the app has seen in the last 18 months.
Many Twitter users were not happy with Instagram opening up to the Android platform. Some iPhone users felt Android Instagram users wouldn’t “get it” or that diluting the Instagram population with many more users would take away from what they think makes it special. Part of what made Instagram so high in demand was it’s perceived “exclusivity.” Many Android users have been awaiting it’s availability on their phones every since the Burbn, Inc announced that it would happen.
If opening it’s doors to Android wasn’t enough, yesterday, Facebook Inc, announced that they would be buying Instagram for, get this…$1 billion dollars in cash and stock. It’s rumored that Facebook Inc, purchased Instagram in order to keep a competitor such as Google from purchasing it.
For those Instagrammers fearful of what may come of Instagram after being purchased by Facebook, Mark 
Zuckerberg, CEO, was quoted as saying, “”We need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.”
“Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people,” Zuckerberg said.
In my opinion, something like this was bound to happen given the popularity of the application. While those who are heavily into social networking and meeting new people via the internet, the explosion in popularity of Instagram will appeal to you. For others, who prefer a more intimate atmosphere for there social networking, it may be a turn off that Instagram is becoming more and more widely used.
What’s say you Cubicle Chicks and Tech Dudes? For you iPhone users, how did you feel about Instagram opening it’s doors to Android? For you Android users, did you download the app now that it’s available? What do you think will happen now that the app has been purchased by Facebook?
Aloha.. for the instagram information, in fact I’ve been seeing some folks using it on fb and wondered what it was and if it was allowed. People add some many links online and social sites, we just don’t know which one is the real one. Lol Now this wonderful post has answered my question. I’m glad I came by and thanks for sharing! Mahalo, Lani 🙂
Thank you for commenting, Lani! I am sure you will be even more infiltrated with Instagram in the upcoming months as Facebook merges it with it’s site. 🙂
Aloha Lani!
I agree, sometimes Facebook is littered with so many links, it’s hard to distinguish what is real and what is spam, but Instagram is definitely the real thing! I’m glad you found the post informative. If you decide to check the app out, let us know what you think!