Instagram a gold mine for journalists during hurricane Sandy

The hashtag #Sandy on Instagram has more than 315,000 photos, most of them uploaded during the last 24 hours during the hurricane Sandy in New York and the east coast in the USA. The vast number of images uploaded by ordinary citizens is a gold mine for news media. We have seen it before and this time it is happening again, journalists asking for permission to use photos on Instagram in their reporting.

Here are a few examples of comments on one single photo:

Case: Bob Dylan creates video with Instagram photos from fans

In a recent campaign, Bob Dylan invited fans in Canada to create a video for his song “Duquesne Whistle” in the same style as his classic video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Fans could participate in a contest by choosing words or phrases of the lyrics, write them on a sign, take a photo and then tag photos on Instagram with the hashtag #dylanlyricphotos.

About 130 images were uploaded using that hashtag and some of them ended up in the final version of the video:

A similar idea was launched by the Swedish winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 – Loreen. Fans were invited to post photos on Instagram and a video for “Euphoria” was to be produced. However, I have never seen if that idea ever materialized. More information about the Dylan video here and here.

And here is the original video for “Duquesne Whistle”.

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The dramatic growth of Instagram – reaches 5 billion twice as fast as Flickr

In just a little more than two years, Instagram has gone from zero to 5 billion shared photos. The popular photo sharing app announced yesterday that it had surpassed 80 million users and 5 billion photos uploaded by its users. As a comparison, it took Flickr 4 years and 7 months to reach 5 billion photos. Instagram has reached that milestone in less than half that time.

Growth in recent months has been fuelled by the release of an Android app, which went live in April 2012.

“The combination of Android and network effects as more people use Instagram mean that we’re able to grow faster now more than ever,” Instagram creator Kevin Systrom told VentureBeat in July.

To illustrate just how fast Instagram has been growing, I made the graph below based on photo ID numbers (up to 550m, when Instagram changed how photos were identified) and official statements (4bn and 5bn).

If you want a graph with the individual data points, click here instead.

Here are the sources for each of the data points in the graph.

For a similar graph of Flickr’s growth from zero to 5 billion photos, see this blog post.

Note: I am @kullin on Instagram if you’d like to follow me.

The social media guide to Eurovision Song Contest 2012 – semi-final 2

Tonight is the second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 in Baku, Azerbaijan. To follow the different entries and their updates in social networks, see the list below. It is an extensive list of official Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace accounts and more. This list is even more complete than the links on the official Eurovison site. Have fun and may the best songs win.

Social media guide to Eurovision Song Contest 2012 Semi-Final (1)

Official Eurovision social media channels:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EurovisionSongContest

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Eurovision and https://twitter.com/#!/eurovisionpress
Twitter hashtags: #eurovision #esc2012

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Participating countries, semi-final 2.

1. Serbia

Artist: Željko Joksimović

Song: Nije Ljubav Stvar

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/ZZeljko

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rts.zeljkojoksimovic

Web: http://www.zeljkojoksimovic.com/

2. F.Y.R. Macedonia

Artist: Kaliopi

Song: Crno I Belo

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/KMPKaliopi

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kaliopi/11489283394

Web: http://www.kaliopi.com.mk/

3. The Netherlands

Artist: Joan Franka

Song: You And Me

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/JoanFranka

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoanFrankaOfficial

Web: http://www.joanfranka.com

4. Malta

Artist: Kurt Calleja

Song: This Is The Night

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Kurtcalleja

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kurtcallejaofficial

Web: http://kurtcalleja.com/

5. Belarus

Artist: Litesound

Song: We Are The Heroes

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/litesoundband

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/litesoundband

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/litesoundmusic

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/litesound

6. Portugal

Artist: Filipa Sousa

Song: Vida Minha

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FilipaSousaCantora

Web: http://filipasousa.com/en

7. Ukraine

Artist: Gaitana

Song: Be My Guest

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/lavinamusic

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/gaitana

Facebook: http://kull.in/JxK82y

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/gaitana

Web: http://gaitana.com/

8. Bulgaria

Artist: Sofi Marinova

Song: Love Unlimited

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Sofi_Marinova

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/SofiMarinovaTV

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sofi.Marinova.Official

Web: http://www.sofi-marinova.com/

9. Slovenia

Artist: Eva Boto

Song: Verjamem

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EvaBotoSlovenia

10. Croatia

Artist: Nina Badrić

Song: Nebo

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/ninabadric7

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/OfficialNinaBadric

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NinaBadricOfficial

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/ninabadricofficial

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ninabadric/

Web: http://www.ninabadric.com/

11. Sweden

Artist: Loreen

Song: Euphoria

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/LOREEN_TALHAOUI

Twitter hashtag: #loreen12p

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LoreenTalhaoui

Instagram: @loreenofficial: http://statigr.am/viewer.php#/user/50776176/

Web: http://www.loreen.se/

12. Georgia

Artist: Anri Jokhadze

Song: I’m A Joker

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/geoblogi

13. Turkey

Artist: Can Bonomo

Song: Love Me Back

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/canbonomo

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/canbonomo

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/canbonomo

Tumblr: http://canbonomo.tumblr.com/

Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/canbonomo

Web: http://www.canbonomo.com/

14. Estonia

Artist: Ott Lepland

Song: Kuula

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Ottlepland

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ottlepland

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/ottlepland

Web: http://www.lepland.ee/

15. Slovakia

Artist: Max Jason Mai

Song: Don’t Close Your Eyes

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/MaxJasonMai

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/maxjasonmai

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maxjasonmai

Web: http://www.maxjasonmai.com/

16. Norway

Artist: Tooji

Song: Stay

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Tooji_

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialTooji

17. Bosnia & Herzegovina

Artist: Maya Sar

Song: Korake Ti Znam

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/mayasarofficial

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/MayaSarOfficial

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mayasarofficial

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/mayasar

Google+: https://plus.google.com/102371423251611121007

Web: http://www.mayasar.com/

18. Lithuania

Artist: Donny Montell

Song: Love Is Blind

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/DonnyMontell

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/donnymontell

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Donatas-Montvydas/27243344154

Cinemagram – an Instagram for animated images

Popular photo app Instagram does many things really well, but one thing it does not handle is the ability to upload and share videos. Enter Cinemagram, a social networking app for sharing short videos that are actually made into animated GIFs. It includes Instagram-like features such as the ability to add filters to your videos, but the twist with Cinemagram is that each video can be edited so that only a portion of the frame is animated and the rest is in form of a still shot. The effects can be hilarious.

The app is fairly new and was initially $1.99 in Appstore, but it is currently free. It is too soon to tell if this app will become successful, but one thing I noticed immediately is that creative uploads have the possibility to get a lot of attention. I had only just downloaded the app and had almost no followers, still my third video has got almost 500 likes during the first 24 hours since upload. You can see it below. The quality is quite poor but it looks a lot better on the iPhone.

60 m

Created with cinemagr.am

One of the reasons that content may “go viral” within the app is that each time you “like” a video, it is re-posted by you in the app, sort of like a retweet on Twitter, so the content gets a lot of exposure. On top of that the videos with the most likes are displayed in one of the tabs in the app.

Cinemagram doesn’t have a very good web presence, but if you manage to find your profile page and/or the page of one of your animated images, you can find the embed code so that you can paste it easily to your blog for example. The page for the image above is: http://cinemagr.am/showSingle/3502979 and my “profile page” is here: http://cinemagr.am/web/user/827705

Check out and download Cinemagram here.

Instagram has changed the way it gives ID numbers to photos

In January I published a blog post about the growth of Instagram. I hade noticed that the unique ID numbers for photos on Instagram were handed out in a serial sequence. In other words, it wasn’t very hard to calculate the growth of the service since the data was publicly available. All you had to do was a bit of digging. For example, here is photo number 400 million: http://statigr.am/viewer.php#/detail/400000000_3849764

Update: the links to Statigram no longer work

A few weeks later, on Feb 7 to be precise, Instagram changed the ID numbers from serial sequence to what looks like a random set of numbers. As of this date, the ID numbers are determined with what I believe is called a hash function (please correct me if I got this wrong). It is no longer possible to determine the volume of uploads to Instagram by simply looking at the ID numbers.

So how do I know this changed on Feb 7? Take a look at the Instagram user “boobievsjagger“. On that day, he posted this photo:

http://statigr.am/viewer.php#/detail/686008000_10844406

According to the first part of the unique ID, this is photo number 686,008,000. The second part of that string is the ID for that user.

Later that day he published another photo:

http://statigr.am/viewer.php#/detail/120983929741434582_10844406

The first part of the ID is now replaced with 18 digits that gives us no clue to what number among the uploads this photo has. The same goes for all other images posted after Feb 7.

I predicted in my January post that Instagram would reach 1 billion uploaded photos by April this year. If you ask me, I think Instagram changed the way each photo is identified after my blog post, which was also picked up by The Next Web, among others. So now we can’t tell how fast Instagram is growing, until the company decides to tell us themselves. Let’s wait and see.

A related question is if the ID numbers for members on Instagram also will change. As it looks now, you can tell that Instagram has at least 27 million users. Here is a friend of mine that just joined: http://statigr.am/viewer.php#/user/27135093/