Instagram Now Bigger Than FourSquare

Image by ThePitcher via FlickrI think I made the prediction at this blog late last year, that Instagram is going to get bigger than FourSquare, and now it has.

The Next Web: Instagram: Now adding 25 photos and capturing 90 likes every second: Instagram is growing like a weed; the app has already blown past 10 million users ...... 25 photo uploads and 90 likes every second ...... while making sure to introduce “as few moving parts as possible” to ensure the team can continue to grow with the small number of engineers the company currently has ...... At the end of the September, the service was seeing a signup rate of over one new user a second — roughly 75 per minute, pushing the service past the 10 million user milestone.

Kevin Shitstorm Of Instagram
Path + Instagram + Color
Twitter ---> Instagram ---> FoodSpotting
Instagram Wave
Google Images, Facebook Photos, Twitpic, Instagram, FoodSpotting
Scaling Instagram Out Of A Coworking Space
Instagram Magic
Does Google Have An Innovation Problem?
What's Up With Pictures?

It should not take Instagram more than two years from now to hit a hundred million users. Give me an Android version, will you? And a web version.

Twitter Need Get Work Done

Measuring Your Twitter Influence

You read more posts on TechCrunch about FourSquare than you do about Google, but that does not mean FourSquare has become bigger than Google, or ever will be. It is just that location has been all the buzz this year. The buzz might have shifted from Twitter, but that in no way means Twitter's utility is less now than it was in the Spring of 2009.

I am so glad I don't have to choose, I log into Facebook every day, often several times a day, but if I had to choose, I'd pick Twitter. I want to be finding new people, new info, I want to access people who I otherwise can't access.

Twitter has not realized its potential. It has not even come remotely close to realizing its potential. Twitter has work cut out for it.

(1) Simplify

If you are a SEO Optimizer in a small town in Kenya, I am going to consider you part of the tech elite. Twitter right now is at the level of the tech elite. Twitter has to simplify and appeal to the average person.

Learn from Tumblr. If I were a new person, and I showed up on the Twitter homepage for the first time, I'd get scared and I'd leave. If I were a little more gutsy, I'd sign up, and then leave, and not see the point in coming back.

The first page has to be dead simple. Okay, so here I give you my email address, and I put in my password here, and, wow, now I can send out my first tweet? Cool. And based on my email address, you are telling me these people in my circle are already on Twitter? Can I follow them? Wow. Here are five topics of interest to me, or three. Based on that you are suggesting three celebrities on Twitter and three lists. I'm excited.

(2) Eat Into The Ecosystem

Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem

Buy or build. Both cost money. Here's money: Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO. Twitter has to go public, and with that money it has to go on a buying spree.

A site known for 140 characters, look at how long the URL for a tweet is: http://twitter.com/paramendra/status/11872417573

That is too long. It should be more like http://tw.tr/1r

That long. Anything longer is too long for a tweet URL.

Photo and video can't be separate services. I am one of the top 100 people in NYC on Twitter, and so far I have never used Twitpic. Am I supposed to create yet another account?

Some of the obvious services have been stated by many. Integrate them into the Twitter site itself.

(3) Link

Why can't a phrase in a tweet be a hyperlink? Bit.ly throws people off. It scares people. The name does not help. It is as if it will bite. If you can't just go ahead and hyperlink a word or a phrase to the desired web address, you will save on space, for one. 140 characters will feel like more space.

(4) Search

This is my number one gripe with Twitter. Google searches the entire web. You should be able to search just your site, just your servers. That is not too much to ask. Every tweet that was ever sent out has to be searchable. That way I'd not need a separate bookmarking service. I already don't need a separate RSS service. Twitter is my Google Reader. I go to my Twitter page in the morning to skim through the headlines of the day.

Real time search is not only real time as of today or the past few days. Real time as it happened a year ago is also relevant.

Twitter Should Hand Over Search To Google

(5) Visualization

Tweets are meant to be read a thousand at a time, a million at a time. Make it possible. Make it possible, fun and playful for individuals and small businesses to play around with the tweet database.

(6) Scale

Get rid of the fail whale.

(7) Monetize

This is where Twitter is going to break away from the Netscape model. Twitter will make a lot of money. It has already started. The tweet is to the web what the atom is to the universe. Prove that. And then go make a ton of money.

Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas

It has to be the ad model. The Twitter ad is going to look like a tweet, but it is going to look different. It has to be obvious it is an ad. Color coding maybe?

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