There is a big shift happening. The mobile photo/video is the new status message. It’s a bit sized form of social expression that is quick, spontaneous, and appeals to such a large population of people that legitimate social networks can be built around it.  The proliferation of smartphones with better cameras has presented this huge opportunity, and so far Instagram has been kicking the most ass.

They have done a very good job of creating a user experience that is useful, fun, and inspiring. An experience so good that they just hit 5 million users and 100 million photos a day. However, they must keep their foot on the gas (and I’m sure they are) if they want t win because it’s far from over. Remember Friendster and Myspace who were also kicking the most ass? Facebook came and knocked them both the eff out, and hasn’t looked back since.

Right now, there’s Instagram, Picplz, Path, Streamzoo (see disclaimer below), With, Color, Foodspotting, Piictu, and a whole lot more. It’s crowded and competitive, and lookout, more contenders have just arrived and they are heavyweights.

In the light blue corner, weighing in at 300 million users, you have Twitter. They have started to roll out the new photos functionality to all their users. While Twitter supported photos a long time ago, the problem was with the presentation of visual content. The feed timeline UI worked perfectly fine for text based tweets, but completely falls apart for photos and videos. With the new release, they’re using a grid like presentation for photos (check it out here).

Now it’s presented in the right way visually and dramatically improves the user experience.

…And in the darker blue corner, weighing in at 750 million users, you have Facebook. Hot on the tails of the With.me release, TC released an article about their new iphone photos app. MG is digging it and the snapshots do look impressive:

Of course, keep in mind Facebook already generates an incredible amount of mobile photos and videos. They pretty much had/has the same issue as Twitter. The Facebook experience suffocates the user experience of mobile photos and videos because the UI falls apart for visual content. News feeds are great for status messages and notifications, but just don’t cut it for photos and videos. Especially on a mobile device.

Instagram took this opportunity by storm and built a successful model for mobile photos: social networking + photo filters/effects. There were plenty of apps out there that provided filters and effects but Instagram was the first to mix in the perfect amount of social. They lowered the barrier to be creative with your photos. Jeremiah Owyang said it better than anyone else on the planet:

I think he’s 95% right except for 1 thing, auto-tune became a fad and is already fading away. Photo effects are simply not going away.

This already red-hot space just went nuclear. It’s an interesting opportunity because it is a different type of social content with different dynamics. This space is still young, mobile is still young, and there is a big question remaining: Will Facebook and Twitter add photo effects (or even video effects too) to their apps and knock out a bunch of startups in one swing? People are already beginning to speculate…

You just can’t rule out the possibility. I personally think Facebook will be the one buying out Instagram in the near future, but that deserves another blog post.

(Disclaimer, I’m the Sr. Product Manager of Streamzoo. Follow me on Twitter @mvuinc)

Where’s Twitter? Get with it!

“TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). “

TED has over 200 videos of the most jaw-dropping, fascinating, inspiring, ingenious, beautiful, persuasive, and courageous talks at the conference.  Believe it or not, the words I used to just describe the videos are the actual the navigation filters on the site.  You know you’re going to see something pretty good if those are the choices.  Let me save you some time and direct you to the top 15 TED videos that will make you smarter:

1.  Brian Greene on string theory

2.  Jeff Bezos on the next web innovation

3.  Hans Rosling’s new insights on poverty

4.  Juan Enriquez shares mindboggling science

5.  Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce

6.  Seth Godin on standing out

7.  Johnny Lee demos Wii Remote hacks

8.  Evan Williams on listening to Twitter users

9.  Michael Merzenich on re-wiring the brain

10.  Tony Robbins asks why we do what we do

11.  Richard St. John’s 8 secrets of success

12.  Bill Stone explores the world’s deepest caves

13.  VS Ramachandran On Your Mind

14.  Carolyn Porco flies us to Saturn

15.  Arthur Benjamin does “Mathemagic”

For more videos, check out TED.com.

]]> http://www.mikevu.com/2009/07/21/the-top-15-ted-videos-that-will-make-you-smarter/feed/ 2 http://www.mikevu.com/2009/07/11/its-been-a-long-while/ http://www.mikevu.com/2009/07/11/its-been-a-long-while/#comments Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:28:07 +0000 themvu http://www.mikevu.com/2009/07/11/its-been-a-long-while/ It’s been a long while since I’ve written a real blog post. I’ve been
so busy with projects that I’ve been neglecting this blog for most of
2009. That horrible habit ends now and it ends because of Posterous.
Even though this is only my second post with Posterous, I can already
tell that this service will be an important part of my life. It is
simply the easiest and simplest way to post anything to your blog,
Facebook, Twitter, and much more. Hopefully they add Drupal soon so
we can get the party started.

Email is still the King as far as online communication goes. It is
the backbone of business and personal communication in today’s modern
world. The folks at Posterous obviously understand this better than
anyone out there. Considering how awesome Gmail is, powerful the iPhone is, and how easy Posterous is to use, I foresee a big rush of blog posts to close out
2009 with a bang. More to come, as I scrounge up all my notes and
scraps in an effort to write something of value. Now go create your
Posterous account, WTF are you waiting for?

• Facebook will add digg-style voting to the content that is shared throughout the social graph
• Google will finally admit that Google Chrome is their new OS.
• Sony will make a comeback at Apple.
• Gas will hit $4 again.
• Boxee will dominate the home theater PC market
• The iPhone will go down as the greatest handheld gaming device
• Kindle 2 will rock our world.
• The mobile internet will help the global economy
• Hard drive docks will be widespread
• Nintendo will partner with Apple
• Disney will buy EA and lay the foundation for virtual world and virtual gaming domination