Instagram overtakes Twitter on mobile! Is Twitter starting to stutter?

Instagram, remember? The Facebook 1 billion usd acquisition earlier this year, that had us scratching our heads? well, they've just exceeded Twitter for daily active users on mobile. Zuckerberg must be smiling.

Instagram is the photo sharing/retouching App which by using a selection of filters, allows you to improve your pics and give them a 1950's Kodak look. That angelic looking pic of Zuckerberg above, gives you an idea. And it's hard to make Zuck look angelic.....

Ideal for Facebook as a photo sharing Social site in part.

Instagram had 7.3m daily users in August according to Comscore whilst Twitter had 6.9m. Astonishing stuff.

In March Instagram had only 880,000 users so it's growing like crazy. That's under a million to over 7 million in 5/6 months. 

The other side is that Instagram users spend more time on their site ("dwell time") than Twitter, so it makes the site more attractive to marketeers. Instagram mobile users spent over 4 hours (!) whilst Twitter users spent under 3. 

Of course too, Twitter will do much better when you look at traffic from a website rather than mobile, but clearly, mobile is key. I had thought long term, Twitter was the ideal choice for mobile but frankly, after its nonsense in switching off API's, they deserve this. It's beginning to make Twitter look a bit old.

One reason Zuckerberg gave for what seemed like a ridiculous purchase of Instagram, was to engage users more on mobile. He's proved right. This level of engagement will result in Facebook revenue on mobile - exactly what they need.

So hats off top Facebook and to Instagram.
Staggering growth when we all said...well....it made no sense.

Except me!
(No, actually me included).

Instagram shows that you can show growth when you do it well.
Twitter shows, that when you mess with Social Media, you suffer.
Indeed, Twitter is now suffering massively from continual virus attack. Be careful if you get a strange message asking you to click a link. Don't.

Twitter is starting to stutter.

Instaglasses from Instagram. This has the potential to replace smartphones. Smartglasses.

You'll remember the concept behind "google goggles" http://streamabout.blogspot.ie/2012/04/google-goggles-apple-fiddles.html in April of this year.

And now we have Instaglasses which is the Instagram version.

Designed by German Markus Gerke, they include a 5 mega pixel camera and (I presume) some web access allowing you to take pics, run them through Instagram and post. So you capture the world as you go. A camera on your head. They'll also soften your view of the world and can actually make Instagram's Mark Zuckerberg look angelic.

Possibly video won't be far behind either, dramatically allowing Instagram to venture into the world of video-sharing. Now that would be spectacular for Instagram and start to make sense of The Facebook 1bn acquisition. In fact, you could stream live from the glasses and actually "follow" people in real time visually. So one better than Twitter because this way you'll see what the celebrity sees.

Not unlike Google Goggles, they're a bit of a dream, a prototype for now, but signify the way that Social Media owners are looking at new content delivery systems outside of mobile. If you own the delivery system, you own the world.

Imagine for example, we all had Instaglasses, then we'd all use Instagram and the traffic stats would explode. Importantly too, these glasses are very cool. Or if we had YouTube glasses, we'd all be video-ing onto youtube.


This isn't a flight of fancy but a hard nosed business way to get consumers using more Social and in this case, using more of Instagram. If glasses developed, there's no reason why they couldn't become smartphones. Say using Facetime or Skype, you can make that person-to-person call and see them with your glasses as you talk. Why not?


Other delivery system ideas have included in-car projection directly onto your windscreen where you can see all your tweets/posts etc. Watches too have been thought of.

The accessibility of Social through easy delivery whether by glasses/watches/phones whatever, will enhance its growth. The problem with the surge in smartphone ownership (driven in turn by the need for consumers to have access online) is that the smartphone owner dictates who has access to it.


So if, as they are, Samsung continue to dominant the mobile handset space, they'll become a player in allowing/denying access to their platform. Iphone 4 and 5 deals with embedding Twitter and Facebook into their operating system (OS) is typical of this "ownership". http://streamabout.blogspot.ie/2012/06/apple-teams-with-facebook-tim-cook.html
 
You want to use our smartphones to reach your audience? How much? Exactly as the App store works.


Whereas, on the other hand, if there's other delivery systems (such as glasses), that issue dissipates. Instaglasses is another good indication of that thinking.

Expect something like them to be in the stores.

Expect to be wearing them.

Expect a surge in smartglasses.

This is going to be huge.