instagram

SAN FRANCISCO -- Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said his company's big hurdle is knowing how to mine the constant stream of photos being uploaded each day to the popular network.

"Instagram isn't necessarily a photo company, or a communications company as I like to say, we're also going to be a big data company," he said today at the GigaOm Road Map conference in San Francisco.

Systrom said the company, recently purchased by Facebook, needs to find better ways to organize the billions of photos shared on Instagram. That means looking beyond hashtags for looking … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said he has no problem with Twitter adding filters -- something Facebook-owned Instagram is known for -- to its photos.

"I don't think that in anyway threatens Instagram because Instagram is a community and not a filter app," Systrom said at the GigaOm's Road Map conference in San Francisco.

It's been reported that Twitter is planning to launch a filters feature in the coming months.

Systrom said adding filters to photos is now ubiquitous with photo sharing and photo apps, so Twitter jumping on the bandwagon is not … Read more

Fake Instagram accounts for American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and JetBlue have been set up with the promise of free flights.

The accounts, @americanairlines_giveaways, @united_giveaways, @jetbluegiveaways, and @delta_giveaways, all work very similarly. They promise a free airline ticket or round-trip ticket to the first several thousand followers, which vary depending on the account.

The accounts have been pretty effective at garnering followers. Delta's fake account already has 21,000 followers after it promised a free trip for the first 20,000 people who followed and shared the account. Likewise, the JetBlue account has 20,000 followers. The American Airlines profile … Read more

Twitter appears poised to take on Instagram directly by offering sets of photo filters through its mobile apps, according to a report in The New York Times.

The Times reported that "in the coming months, Twitter plans to update its mobile applications to introduce filters for photos that will allow people to share altered images on Twitter and bypass Instagram."

If true, this would potentially be a very big move for Twitter, because it could keep people taking photos on smartphones from using the Facebook-owned Instagram altogether. Whether or not Twitter could create as passionate a community around … Read more

I am a regular user of Instagram and a regular user of an iPad. Unfortunately, these two items do not directly connect. Instagram has yet to release an app optimized for the iPad's larger screen, and I would advise against anyone browsing pixelated images using Instagram magnified on the iPad. Thus, you must turn to a third-party app.

Before we proceed, I should state that Instagram does not let you upload photos via a third-party app. Such an app lets you view your various Instagram feeds and offers a variety of fun and useful features, from commenting on and … Read more

Hurricane Sandy is poised to become the superstorm of the century as it looks to go for a stroll across the Atlantic seaboard and right into the middle of America's largest metropolis. In the process, and certainly a bit perversely, this unholy marriage of a tropical storm and a Nor'easter is shaping up to be a feather in the cap of Instagram.

The photo-sharing app that Facebook snapped up earlier this year is reporting that users have already uploaded and tagged hundreds of thousands of photos related to Hurricane Sandy:

As almost everyone knows, Hurricane Sandy is bearing down on the East Coast, and when all is said and done, its likely to leave a wide, expensive, and potentially fatal path of destruction in its wake. Yet despite a massive number of legitimate photos of the storm being uploaded to every social network you can think of -- including 10 a second to Instagram -- a number of sensational photos seem to be dominating the conversation.

The photos show incredible images like the eye of the hurricane floating over the top of the Statue of Liberty. Or of a very … Read more

For non-East Coasters like myself, it's hard to picture what it's like going through hurricane prep, or even a hurricane itself. With Hurricane Irene last year, Twitter and Facebook were full of photos of what the storm was really like, by those who were in the middle of it.

As Hurricane Sandy approaches, the same type of photos are appearing again, but with a good amount of them coming from Instagram. To make it easy to follow the stream of photos on Instagram, a couple of developers made a Web site aptly titled Instacane.com.

Instacane monitors (from … Read more

Instagram does not offer an app with native support for the iPad, and blowing up the iPhone app on an iPad is not ideal unless you enjoy blurry, pixelated images. There are a number of free apps -- InstaFlow, Padgram, Pictacular -- that let you view your Instagram feed on the iPad, so why would you spend $1.99 on Iris? I can't quite recommend you do so, but it is the most polished of the group I looked at this week.

Before I get into Iris, I must first offer the standard Instagram-on-the-iPad disclaimer: Instagram does not let you post photos via a third-party app. Thus, no third-party app offers full Instagram functionality. An app such as Iris, however, lets you view crisp, clear, and large Instagram photos on an iPad, along with a variety of fun and useful features, from commenting on and liking photos to sharing via Twitter and browsing photos by location on a map.… Read more