Instagram is the Tweet of the Town for Mobile App Engagement ~ Discount Tablets Review

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Instagram is the Tweet of the Town for Mobile App Engagement

3:06 AM No comments

Instagram, the fun and free program that allows friends and family to share photos easily is putting those Twitter birds to shame. A study, conducted this past August, showed that mobile users have been visiting Instagram’s mobile site on their smartphones more than Twitter.

As first reported by All Things D blogger, Mike Isaac, although Twitter still rules as the social network that has the most unique total users to date, Instagram is increasing in its number of DAU (Daily Active Users). To have already have so much popularity, this early in the game, the two-year-old Instagram understands why mobile engagement is essential for any social media network to be a success.

What’s Instagram’s Secret?

The free photo-sharing program that was recently purchased by Facebook has enjoyed more activity from users recently, possibly because images are known to transcend all forms of spoken language and so an image can convey a message translated to many images. ComScore’s report of Instagram’s success only confirms that high user engagement could equal high monetization for Facebook, that is if they don’t change the app too much… and keep it as a free service.

Why Is Mobile Engagement Important?

Mobile engagement, as mentioned above, can equate to meaning more money for a company that focuses on social media. As seen in the past, the higher DUA (daily user activity) a social media network has, the more successful it will be. Case in point, MySpace, Friendster and now possibly Flickr… all had their hay day in user activity, but as users change, so does their mobile interest. In the end, users fell in love with the ability to share information, videos, images and the ability to enjoy live chat on Facebook over anything that MySpace had to offer. Even if Instagram doesn’t have as many unique members as Twitter, the fact that the users they do have spend twice the amount of time visiting Instagram, as they do Twitter, speaks volumes about their difference in popularity.

What About Facebook?

Although Facebook has declined to comment on questions of where this takes Instagram and whether or not Facebook will seek ways in which to monetize the currently free program, many are already seeing how much more the app is being used as compared to other free photo-sharing programs like Pinterest and Flickr.

To keep things interesting, Google has recently purchased Snapseed, a photo service that photographers can use to do quick edits of images before sharing the content. This is, of course, an effort on the part of Google+ to cater to the more serious photo enthusiasts and therefore give Google+ the reputation of being the professionals social network. Will Google+ find any success in the world of social media and mobile engagement? Not on Facebook’s watch.