Life After Instagram: Opportunities In The Mobile Photo-Sharing Ecosystem

The digital camera feature has been a major driver of mobile phone sales for a decade. But Instagram's sale to Facebook last year was a watershed moment for the mobile photo-sharing industry.

Among other things, it showed that a mobile-first photo sharing service could be worth $1 billion dollars, and that the app store economy could grow a photo-focused social network at speeds so alarming that an incumbent — in this case, Facebook — would be prompted to neutralize the threat by acquiring it.

In a $4 from BI Intelligence>$4, we take a fresh look at the mobile photo-sharing industry and analyze data to see how Instagram has fared since they were acquired, study a few rising competitors including Snapchat, look at how mobile start-ups and established Web-centric businesses are monetizing camera and photo-sharing apps, and examine opportunities for brands to use their engaging networks.

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Here's a brief overview of the mobile photo-sharing ecosystem:

• Instagram is still on top: As part of its new video feature announcement this month, $4 That's up from 5 billion photos when the Facebook deal closed last September, suggesting a monthly average of more than 1 billion photos shared, or a daily average of more than 40 million photos.
• But others, like Snapchat, are certainly worth watching rising: $4. Snapchat stands out as particularly photo-focused, and has an ultra-youthful user base. The company revealed that its users are sending $4. The Flickr iPhone app has rebounded in recent months, and Twitter's Vine service — 6-second looping movies — aren't photos, but they're casually shot and shared the same way mobile photos are. Thanks to Twitter's support, $4, and has already picked up 13 million downloads.
• There are various different ways to monetize in the land of a thousand camera apps: Instagram was not the first photo app with filters, and it was hardly the last. A glance at the iPhone App Store, for example, shows $4. Different monetization categories include $4
• And brands are figuring out how to get in on the action: $4, such as the $4 during this year's Super Bowl blackout. $4. Instagram in particular has grown as a place where brands can build $4. Starbucks, for example, has attracted 1.3 million followers on Instagram, and routinely passes 50,000 "likes" per photo.

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