GigaOM » Hipstamatic

Hipstamatic attempts to revive mobile photographers with the launch of social app Oggl

Eliza Kern — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:00:01 +0000

With the exploding popularity of Instagram, the social photo app that now counts more than 100 million monthly active users, it could be easy to forget that you ever shared your iPhone photos any other way. But remember Hipstamatic? The iPhone-exclusive app was one of the early ones that captured the attention of mobile photographers with square frames and filters, but ultimately, it missed the boat on social. And for many people, the rest is history.

Hipstamatic CEO Lucas Buick.

But it seems Hipstamatic isn’t dead quite yet. While the company laid off its engineering team last summer and has tried a few others social apps in the past that didn’t catch on, it plans to announce the debut of Oggl on Wednesday, a standalone app to serve as a social network for your Hipstamatic photos. It will also introduce the ability for users to subscribe to Hipstamatic for exclusive filters.

Even more broadly, it seems Hipstamatic is trying to position itself as the photography app for the true artist, not necessarily for anyone with an iPhone. At the company’s press event in San Francisco on Tuesday, CEO Lucas Buick quoted famous photographer Ansel Adams, showed the work of photojournalist Damon Winter, and referred to features with words like “filters,” “lenses,” and “new gear,” — the types of phrases you hear from serious photographers.

In other words, this is not the app for your selfies.

“We’re trying to build this little empire for photo nerds,” Buick told me. “We’re not trying to build something to be a new communication tool. It’s really an art tool.”

The traditional Hipstamatic app will stay the same for those who want to keep using it, but Oggl will provide the same photo-taking capabilities while also allowing users to share those photos into a feed — very much like Instagram. And most importantly, users can still share photos to other apps including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Foursquare. The app adds a feature I’ve always wished Instagram would adopt, which is basically a photo retweet, or the ability to re-post someone else’s photo that you like. For now, you still have to take your photo in the Hipstamatic app, preventing people from uploading photos they took with a “real” camera and slapping on a filter.

The app will launch in Apple’s App Store this week, and will at first become available on an invite-only basis as it rolls out slowly to users. The app is free to download, with the option to subscribe for 99 cents per month, or $10 per year, for access to special filters and other features.

There’s no question that the addition of a Hipstamatic feed where I can check out my friend’s photos would make me far more likely to use the app. Previously, Hipstamatic wasn’t a destination — it was a camera tool. But that could change; the Hipstamatic filters and photo processing somehow feel more high-quality and expansive than the options on Instagram. Plus, the sharing features that allow me to take photos in Hipstamatic and send them elsewhere is great, especially as social apps are increasingly building silos around content.

There are aspects of Oggl that feel cluttered and confusing. The requirement that you take your photos in Hipstamatic rather than upload them from the camera roll is a real deal-killer. When I’m out on a hike or walking down a busy city street, I want to be able to quickly snap a photo to filter and share on Instagram later. If I have to open an app, there are a lot of photos I’d never take. And the navigation on Oggl between the camera, the multiple filters and lenses, the main feed, and the sharing options isn’t terribly clear.

But using Oggl, I’m reminded of why I initially fell in love with Instagram. As CEO Kevin Systrom has highlighted before, it’s all about the simplicity. Scroll, heart, snap, filter, share. That’s it.

The app’s confusing nature, and Buick’s discussion of Hipstamatic as a “lifestyle brand” in addition to being an app could reflect some of the turmoil and changes the company has faced since Instagram’s rise, which Fast Company examined in a three-part profile of the company’s struggles. Buick said that after Facebook bought Instagram, “everyone thinks they need to buy Hipstamtic,” but that he’s committed to remaining independent of both an external owner or venture funding.

“For us, the biggest challenge is to find ourselves and not forget what we’re doing,” he told me.

So it’s possible that Oggl is too little too late when it comes to social photo apps. But it’s also worth considering that if Instagram starts integrating even further with Facebook over the next few years, and if more sponsored content or advertising starts showing up in Instagram feeds (which isn’t a remote possibility), users could tire of Instagram and start looking for another solution.

And if Hipstamatic sticks around, it could be a good choice.

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Hipstamatic confronts layoffs on a big day for photo apps

Eliza Kern — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 21:10:51 +0000

It’s been a big day for photo apps, but probably not in the way folks at Hipstamatic would have hoped. Just as Instagram released a significant update to its app, adding geolocation features and enhancing a user’s ability to tell stories, reports are surfacing that much of photo app Hipstamatic’s team has been laid off.

Hipstamatic is a photo-sharing app that lets users apply filters much in the way Instagram does, but has lagged in popularity compared to its much flashier competitor, which is awaiting government approval to join Facebook. Hipstamatic and Instagram forged a deal earlier this year, allowing users to post photos from the paid app Hipstamatic to the free Instgram, but it seems the bootstrapped underdog in the photo-sharing world couldn’t keep up.

Photobucket also released new features on Thursday, demonstrating how difficult it is to be successful in the photo space dominated by Facebook for desktop photo uploads and Instagram for on-the-go shots.

Instagram is currently ranked seventh in the Apple iTunes store’s list of free apps. Hipstamatic is ranked 99th on the list of paid apps — it costs $1.99 to download.

Several former Hipstamatic employees and friends took to Twitter to vent over the layoffs:

Would love if the entire team could get snapped up by someone. Really is an awesome fucking team. Totally squandered where we were.

— Jonathan Wight (@schwa) August 16, 2012

So in case you didn’t get the memo. Entire team laid off. 3 devs, 1 designer, 1 writer. Some of THE best people I’ve ever worked with…

— Jonathan Wight (@schwa) August 16, 2012

Hanging out at Sightglass with the former Hipstamatic team. Love those guys.

— Sam Soffes (@samsoffes) August 16, 2012

Instagram releases version 3.0. Hipstamatic fires all of its engineers. Hilarious.

— Sam Soffes (@samsoffes) August 16, 2012

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Hipstamatic’s new iOS app is like the disposable camera of yore

Colleen Taylor — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 04:43:43 +0000

Did you ever think we’d be nostalgic for those clunky, plastic, landfill-bound disposable cameras that were all the rage in the 1990s? Me neither, but the world works in mysterious ways.

Synthetic, the team behind the Hipstamatic app (which essentially came out with a filter-enhanced iPhone photo sharing capability before Instagram made it really cool) has come out with a new iOS app aimed at replicating the experience of using a disposable camera.

Hipstamatic on Tuesday announced the imminent release of a new iOS app called “D-series” which will make its App Store debut on Thursday, December 15. The app, which is Hipstamatic’s first free download, essentially lets you create a shared album of 24 mobile photos with a certain group of friends. “From the first snap to the last, everyone shoots to one roll, and at the end photos are instantly exchanged to all of the camera’s contributors,” Hipstamatic says.

You can share the entire album or individual prints to Facebook, Twitter or via email. The app comes with three “cameras,” which are basically filter features. Users can pay to download additional more souped up “cameras,” such as the 99 cent Foxy X69, which Hipstamatic says “captures a shallow depth of field from within a scanned film border.”

There is no shortage of apps that want to help you take photos and share them with others. Path and Color are probably the two most notable players in the arena right now, but Hipstamatic D-series seems intent on having a more non-committal user experience — sharing a photo album with people you hang out with during a wedding or night out at a bar, not necessarily your more static group of close friends and family. From the looks of it, the D-series app is similar in more ways to Waddle, the group photo sharing iPhone app that launched earlier this fall. It also reminds me of Pool Party, the now-defunct Android app made by Google’s recently-axed Slide division.

Despite the crowded landscape, it looks like a solid app and it fills a nice niche. It’s also fun to root for the Hipstamatic folks in general: Synthetic has taken on no outside investors since it was founded five years ago, and the company now has 12 staff. While Hipstamatic may be seen as a scrappy underdog to Instagram right now, it’s a self-sustaining scrappy underdog — and that is never something to underestimate.

Here’s a video of the app at work:

Hipstamatic Disposable from Synthetic on Vimeo.

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Is photo app EyeEm taking on mission impossible?

Bobbie Johnson — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 08:55:26 +0000

If there’s one space that feels over-saturated right now, it’s photography apps. Just take a look at the market and you’ll see a parade of popular names: Hipstamatic, Photosynth, Snapseed and many, many more. Just yesterday, one of the leaders, Instagram was blowing its own trumpet because it passed the milestone of 150 million shared photos. Meanwhile, the iTunes App Store alone lists more than 7,500 downloads in its photography category. Oh, yes, and then there’s Color: the service with a $41 million weight around its neck.

Who would be crazy enough to launch in a space that crowded?

Step forward EyeEm, a German startup that’s launching its photo app for iPhone and Android today. Have they got what it takes?

Well, founder Florian Meissner knows there’s a vast amount of competition out there. He admires most of them. “Instagram and Lightbox are great, and focus on content creation,” he says, “And as a result, the number of photos is skyrocketing.”

But he believes there is still a chance to emerge as a big name, by doing sharing right… and that means making it easier to do than anybody else.

“The winner of this game is the one who comes up with the simplest user experience and user interface,” he says. “When you fire up our app, you have two options: take a photo or see photos.”

True, EyeEm does let you take photos. This is fairly ordinary stuff, and includes the standard set of filters to dirty-up your image — whether it’s for getting all artsy or simply pretending you aren’t taking your pictures on a phone. The filters, though, are used in real time rather than applied in post-processing like most other apps, which Meissner likens to “watching through a kaleidoscope.” Still, though, it’s not a radical departure from the past, or any other service that falls into the Yet Another Mobile Photo App bucket.

But the real difference with EyeEm — and the place where it might have a slim chance of breaking out — is in sharing and seeing other people’s photos. This is done through what the company calls “vibes”: essentially an automated system that categorizes photographs by subject and location, allowing you to tap into the stream of photos from other people.

“We believe hashtags are pointless,” says Meissner. “No one should need to bother with them. We know who you are, where you are, when you’re taking the photograph. So we’ve developed an algorithm that gives you as accurate suggestions as possible.”

It’s not entirely accurate that they think tags are dead; they just think tags should require less human intervention. For an example: here’s a photo I took just now. In the best tradition of Internet photography, it’s of one of my cats (sorry it’s a bit dark, that’s the Great British Summer for you).

Once I’ve taken the photo, EyeEm automatically tags it with a few notes based on what it knows about me already. I can then add new tags, or delete existing ones if they’re not correct.

And these all feed into a very intuitive viewer that can show you photos related to you, and who took them. Here, I’ve swiped into the popular photos stream to take a look around.

Like the initial tags, the selection of photos available to you is also based on what EyeEm knows. “We recommend you photo albums based on your taste,” Meissner tells me. “Say, for example, you’re at a skateboarding competition in Madrid, we can suggest photographs of skateboarding from around the world, or show you pictures that are being taken elsewhere in Madrid right now.”

Overall, EyeEm does what it says: it’s all very, very easy to use and feels friendly. You can sign in through Facebook, and share your photos on pretty much all of the social networks, or send it to a select group of friends (a la Path, but in a more ad hoc fashion).

I really like the product. It’s pretty fun, with a sort of Instagram meets Tumblr feeling as you watch the photos of people around you. That will no doubt get bigger as the service gains users. And I think their philosophy is definitely on the right track. But doesn’t this all feel a bit late in the day? After all, how is anyone going to compete with the established players in this young but oversaturated market?

“I really admire the idea Color had,” says Meissner, of what is probably the biggest straightforward rival. “But it failed because it didn’t have accurate user interface… It’s not about having stupid amounts of money.”

Perhaps it’s not an entire surprise that EyeEm is coming late to the game, however; Meissner’s own conversion to the world of photo sharing apps came fairly recently. He says the realization that they were the future came after he moved to New York to work for a photography magazine — and on his first day in the city, his SLR was stolen. The only camera he had was an iPhone, and he suddenly discovered the huge communities of people sharing creative photos on Twitter and elsewhere. It’s a nice story, but reveals something about why EyeEm is late to arrive at the party.

Still, after building the product under their own steam, the company now has ambition. It’s raised a small round of money from Passion Capital and Wellington Partners, and is now pushing forward from its headquarters in Berlin. The app, which is free, is now available in the Android Market and on iTunes. Let’s see if it manages to stand out from the crowd.

“We believe we have the most accurate sharing system out there,” says Meissner. “And the key differentiation is that we go beyond the social graph.”

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Hipstamatic tapped for crowdsourced music video

Ryan Lawler — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:45:03 +0000

When singer-songwriter Terra Naomi was ready to produce a new album, she knew she didn’t want to work with a major label. Having been through the process before, she decided to set out on her own and crowd-fund her new album. But without the marketing power of a major label behind her, Naomi knew she would need to get creative and leverage new technology and social media to reach new audiences online. Enter Hipstamatic.

Naomi had her first hit on YouTube in 2006 with the video for the song “Say It’s Possible,” which earned her the first YouTube Award for Best Music Video and got her signed with Island Records. Not ready to go down that path again, she leveraged her fan base to help fund a tour and production of her new album, “To Know I’m Ok,” which goes on sale today. But producing an album is only one of the things a record label is good for. Once it’s done, there’s also the tiny matter of getting it noticed.

Since Naomi would be mostly marketing the album herself, she decided to partner with technology and social media companies to do so. The first partner she reached out to was social image sharing app Hipstamatic. What was important to Naomi was creating a real partnership with the app maker, not just using it as a promotional vehicle. “I wanted a partner that would be involved in an ongoing way,” Naomi said.

So they created a contest that would be one of the first of its kind, asking Hipstamatic users to submit photos which would be included in the first music video from Naomi’s album, “You For Me.” The contest asked users to post photos responding to the question, “What do you love?” The result of the contest was a little overwhelming: According to Naomi, Hipstamatic received more than 10,000 photo responses.

So how do you sort through 10,000 photos and find the best ones for your music video? Most of the hard work was done by the community itself, which rated photos to help choose the 100 or so that would make the final cut. Naomi also added a few photos that she especially liked and wanted to make sure were in the video.

The video, which combines visuals of Naomi singing and playing the piano along with Hipstamatic photos interspersed in, was directed by Alex Albrecht, who is probably best known as co-host of Diggnation and The Totally Rad Show. Albrecht, who has been moonlighting as a director on two short sci-fi films, got involved after being connected to Naomi through his agent. This was Albrecht’s first music video, but it likely won’t be his last. Speaking on the phone, he said he enjoyed the ability to allow the music to inform the visuals that were displayed on-screen.

The Hipstamatic deal is just one partnership that Naomi has lined up to promote the song and her new album. She’s also teaming up with social media analysis firm Klout, fashion and music site 1Band1Brand and, of course, YouTube. While YouTube is where Naomi first got her start, five years have passed since she first went viral. So she’ll be working with some of today’s bigger YouTube stars to reach their audiences to promote her new album.

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