Apple launches official Instagram account to promote #ShotoniPhone photos

Apple just launched its own @apple account on Instagram. This specific Apple account focuses on iPhone photographers’ photos. It seems like a logical thing to do, especially with Instagram being a hub for smartphone photographers to share their work. For now you can see albums that are actually video slideshows of the photographers’ work and a sound clip of him or her talking about their work. Apple is even asking other Instagram users to share their own stuff through the #ShotoniPhone hashtag. So, if you’ve been meaning to share your great iPhone-based work or just want to look at gorgeous shots, this Apple account might be worth the follow.

Source: The Verge

Instagram is testing out a favorite friends list

Instagram as we know it now is pretty black and white when it comes to sharing. You either share to the public or you keep it private. People have tried to work around that with the creation of Finstagrams or “fake Instagrams” or private accounts only followed by a handful of their closest friends. But this approach, when more and more people are added to it have its users become less attracted to using Instagram. The social network is hoping to simplify the process of sharing with a select few with its new “Favorites” list. These people are your closest friends whom you’d want to share certain photos, too. Instagram is testing it out with a few users but it’s expected to come to more, if not all, users later on.

Basically, when you make a post and you have this feature, you’ll get an option on whether to share the photo or story with your favorites. These people on your list will have a green “favorites” badge (which is a star) attached to them. You’ll also get a new favorites tab, which is also denoted by a star that shows all the non-ephemeral posts you’ve shared to your favorites. It’ll be like a second timeline. Favorites lists are private and you can add or delete as many friends as you like. No one will know if they’ve been added to or removed from your list but they would see a green badge at the top of your post to signify that they’re on your favorites list. If you remove them, they’ll lose all access to private posts and your favorites tab will appear empty to them.

Source: The Verge

Instagram isn’t done taking Snapchat's features, introduces ‘face filters’

Instagram adds one more missing piece to its Story feature: Snapchat lenses. Those augmented reality-based filters that lets you add things like bunny ears or a dog’s snout on you. Of course, Instagram can’t call these lenses so they opt to call them “face filters.” You can access the feature at the bottom right of the Story window. It looks like a face icon with sparkles on them. And just like Snapchat lenses, you can go through the different filters to play around with.

As Mashable’s Raymond Wong points out, this blatant copying of Snapchat might not look good but it has been paying off for Facebook. Last month, Instagram garnered 200 million daily active users using Stories, which is already more than the entire daily active user base of Snapchat.

Instagram now has 700 million users, with 100 million added since December

Facebook-owned photo sharing app Instagram now boasts 700 million active users, with 100 million coming on board since December. Instagram has added various new ways to share photos, boomerangs, videos as well as stories. 

Facebook bought Instagram for 1 Billion when it realized it could not compete with the popular photo sharing app. Since then, Instagram's evolved by emulating features found on other popular image sharing services, most notably Snap.

Click to read more ...