Facebook buys Instagram: good thing or bad thing?

I confess, my first reaction to news that Facebook has bought Instagram was “Yay! Now all those friends who I’ve been trying to convince to join Instagram will finally join and we can all ride off into the Amaro-tinted sunset, sharing images.”

My second reaction was: “Oh no! Now everyone will be using it.” It’s like when Nike bought Converse and they went from being cool shoes you only saw on Joey Ramone and people as cool as Joey Ramone (or rather, people who got close to being as cool as him) to being in every suburban mall, everywhere. I’m sure it’s much better for the financial health and prospects of the company.

Despite a slew of stories a few years ago wondering whether Facebook was no longer relevant now that 40somethings were using it (oh yeah, them), it’s continued to grow, evolve and remain top of the social networking heap. My snobbish second response aside, for users it’s likely a good thing that this cool app now has FB-size power behind it.

Do you Instagram? What do you think?

Pssst – follow me on Instagram at JHowze.

About Jennifer Howze

Jennifer Howze is the Creative Director and co-founder of BritMums. She blogs about family travel at Jenography.net, tweets at @JHowze and Instagrams at @JHowze. Previously, she wrote the Alpha Mummy blog at The Times and as a journalist has contributed to The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal, Travel & Leisure, Budget Travel, CNN.com, Allure, SELF and Premiere, among others. She won The Maggie Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for a health article in Seventeen magazine.

Kate towey

Monday 16th of April 2012

I think in terms of its reputation amongst 'original' users - there is definitely a (slightly selfish?) element of 'everyone having those trainers now so I am not interested'.

I've helped organise two 'InstaMeets' in Manchester over the last year - where people who use the app get together to meet and we held an exhibition of some local Instagramers pictures in Feb. I know that lots of people who came to the events feel a little bit like Instagram sold out and have lost the love somewhat.

That said, I think it's really impressive that they built a company that Facebook wanted to buy after such a short space of time and like you say Jennifer it will be nice now to see other friends using the app and loving the filters.

Facebook say they are leaving it be as a standalone company but we'll see how long that lasts. I think there could be ways to integrate some of the things we love about Instagram with some of things we like and use on Facebook. Only time will tell...

Sylwia Presley

I love Instagram and use it for private projects and work in social media, but I am a bit sad it is not connected to Facebook as I do not trust Facebook on their management of my data. I liked it better when it was a separate team. I think releasing app for Android phone did a better job of promoting it then selling it for Facebook, but since the Instagram team had no business model I guess this is the way forward. Again, I will be using it just more carefully as to content I post there.

Jennifer Howze

Good point - it's important to keep your eye on the ball in terms of what information you're sharing or that's getting out there.

I wish I could instagram! My phone (Android) is too out of date for it, and my iPod doesn't have a camera!

So for now I'm sticking with the old skool Vignette that I can only share on Facebook... sigh!

Time for an upgrade?

Sunday 15th of April 2012

Nixdminx, I agree. I love the immediacy and beauty of Instagram. Lots of talk about whether it's a good investment for Facebook - but really it's the only way to take photos on the iphone that look good.

nixdminx

Wednesday 11th of April 2012

I love instagram - I think it will be fine, it's a big one for me and while I keep trying the other stuff like bol.t and pinterst, I'm still a big snapper of the moment, so it suits me fine - Facebook will treat it well I hope x

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