In 2013, 1.6 billion pictures were shared over social media and mobile photo sharing apps. That’s a rate of 600 million photos shared daily. To give you perspective of how quickly that number is growing, 10% of all the photos taken in all of history were taken last month.
Photo sharing apps are creating new opportunities for app developers in areas like editing, mosaics, lenses and image stitching, to name a few. In fact, near the end of the year, you may have seen your Instagram feed exploding with “Year in Review” videos generated by a handful of these apps.
Statigram offered the opportunity to create one such slideshow with pop-up metrics of your photos from the year. Paired with music, this was a nice treat for any “IGer” looking to show off his best-of-the-best. Flipagram and Picflow also stitched images together into a video and were frequently seen on the Instagram stream. The end of the year is a natural period for reflection, and the apps filled that need for photo-sharing users. But since then, you probably haven’t seen any compilation videos. This begs the question: Are these photo-video apps seasonal, or a fad bound to disappear?
There are a few considerations for the longevity of these types of applications. First, users are likely heavy users of a photo-sharing app like Instagram. However, what would be the point in their reliving photos from the past on a regular basis? The heavy users’ audiences have already seen these images and are likely looking for what’s next, not yesterday’s material.
On the other hand, these photo-stitching apps can be used compile thematic images in one thread. A photo-sharer that covers a range of subjects or many sub-segments of a particular topic can aggregate her choice images into one post. This could pique the interest of her audience again.
On the brand side, it is a different story. Sharpie and Oreo, which are major players in the Instagram space, have not yet used these apps, nor have the majority of brands. This is where Renegade thinks the opportunity lies. While these apps may seem seasonal, the compilations are unique, unlike one-off photos. If done creatively and with forethought, a brand could create real interest in the content that strengthens the connection with its followers year-round! If Boo the dog and Jamon the pig can grow their followings with selfies, then one would think creative slideshow content could make a great connection with an audience as well.
What do you think?
