Photographers, amateurs, and remaining hipsters of the Android network can now rejoice- Instagram is here for you. Instagram, a popular smartphone application that transforms one’s phone into a fully-fledged camera, was previously only offered for iPhone users until yesterday. 24 hours into its release, there’s been one million downloads of the app alone and its popularity is spreading across the globe.
Described as a ‘fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends,’ Instagram is a photo editing application that transforms your standalone image into a filtered photograph with a flick of a finger. Launched in 2010 by co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the success of the application over the past two years has been astronomical. In the very least, it’s caused phone developers and the application community to question and reconsider the weight of importance of a camera lens in a mobile phone.
After taking a photo, a user is provided with a range of 18 photo filters that distort, warp, colour and blend their pictures into something that no longer resembles the original photograph. Along with their popular filters, there’s also options to add borders, change its saturation and brightness and darkness, along with handy photo rotation for those shots that always appear in your photos folder the wrong way.
One of its greatest successes and probably one of the key factors to its prominence in the application market is its accessibility. With one-click sharing to users Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Foursquare accounts, its diverse posting application across numerous social media networks means that the saturated success of this filtering app is widespread. With access to Flickr ‘coming soon,’ it’s no longer advertised as a flimsy free photo app but a serious photography tool that every smartphone user shouldn’t be without.
User’s statistics agree with its popularity. There are 30 million registered users, all of which are uploading 5 million photos a day. So far in its two years, there have been over 1 billion Instagram photos and images uploaded and spread across the web based on iOS devices, like the iPhone, alone.
Appearing on Google Play in an official launch yesterday, it’s now available. After a registration of interest was held on March 24th, it saw 43,000 people add their names to a list of excited awaiting Instagram fans. Now available with devices running Android 2.2 and up, this list is only going to grow stronger and stronger. While it isn’t supported by tablets or Windows Phone users as yet, Instagram refuse to rule out a filtering future for other devices and networks, making it become one of the fastest growing applications on the market.
In 24 hours of its launch, over 1 million new users have joined the Instagram revolution. With Twitter backlash over the disappearance of iOS exclusivity, the news of its release has shot out over the communications world along with its popularity. While there are other similar photo-editing applications across the app store, none have come close to the unprecedented popularity of Instagram- and it’s now dominating both the iOS and Android market without any signs of slowing.