The other day I posted that the new, improved (on iOS) Flickr and mobile photo network EyeEm were the big winners from the news that Instagram was changing its terms of service.

EyeEm however seems to be doing much, much better than previously thought. In a development overlooked by the tech press, the Berlin based EyeEm came out of nowhere to pass Instagram in the US app charts this week.

Website netzwertig (original article in German) tells us that EyeEm originally benefitted from the news around the Instagram terms of service by taking the no6 spot in the photo / video category in the US app charts on 20 December.

netzwertig says it then sunk back down until it was a lowly 232 in photo and video apps on 12 Jan.

On the Sunday (13 Jan) it suddenly leapt to number nine. Then to number five on Monday. At one point EyeEm was no2 behind YouTube.

As of today (18 Jan) EyeEm is no20 in US free app downloads (overall) while Instagram is no.22.

It’s worth putting this achievement into perspective:

At the same time as major media outlets were covering Instagram's latest numbers announcement without question, a small German company was overtaking Instagram on its home territory.

Not benefitting from Facebook’s millions of $ or acres of previous free publicity, this seems to have been driven by good old fashioned word of mouth, with EyeEm committing the other day to respect the fact that users own their photos.

Indeed, EyeEm is rapidly experiencing the growing pains of a network having seen a sudden influx of new users. Not all members of what used to be a fairly niche community were pleased at the prospect of teens on the network posting so-called ‘selfies’, while EyeEm itself found its servers overloaded earlier in the week.

Update – Instagram pulled ahead of EyeEm again today (Saturday 19 Jan) holding the no 5 spot in the US App Store among photo / video apps, one spot behind Instagram on no4.

Still, even almost level-pegging with no publicity in support is a huge achievement bearing in mind who they are up against, let alone the fact that they beat Instagram for most of last week in downloads.

Its also worth noting that (Hamburg based) Tadaa also seems to have done well, reaching no 10 in US photo and video apps on Monday 14 January.

(Originally posted on my visual social media blog 8mpx.co.uk)

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The debate about whether Instagram is or isn’t losing users rages on. The New York Post continues to claim yes, saying its active user numbers have dropped by half.

Instagram owner Facebook not surprisingly says no.

But what about the Instagram alternatives. To what extent does the same data (from AppStats) show that they’ve benefitted?

The figures show that all photo social networks measured by AppStats have seen a significant uplift. Flickr however is the big winner, with a huge increase (+651%) in active users based on these stats. Meanwhile EyeEm is the main beneficiary among mobile-only networks.

First of all it’s worth mentioning what AppStats does and doesn’t measure.

It measures apps connected to Facebook, not the absolute no of users a service has (or even most of them). Many users of photo networks of course don’t share with Facebook. However, as a trend these figures are useful.

Here is what the stats show:

Flickr. 12 December 98,449 Monthly Active Users. 12 January 740,000 (+651%)

EyeEm. 12 December 74,624 Monthly Active Users. 12 January 230,000 (+208%)

Tadaa. 12 December 52,235 Monthly Active Users. 12 January 80,000 (+53%)

Streamzoo. 12 December 33,321 Monthly Active Users. 12 January 50,000 (+50%)

Starmatic. 12 December 5,095 Monthly Active Users. 12 January 10,000 (+96%)

What the figures tell us: Flickr, EyeEm now the main Instagram alternatives

1 – The Flickr relaunch and the new iOS app has been a huge success.

Thanks to Instagram’s problems, Flickr benefitted to a greater extent than I originally thought it would. As a result, the big competitor to Instagram is now Flickr. And with an arguably better app, a long history and an owner with deep pockets, it’s strong competition.

2 – Out of the mobile only social networks, German companies Tadaa and EyeEm have traditionally been level pegging.

Despite some recent good PR by Tadaa, the App Stats figures are clear. EyeEm has pulled away and is now the second biggest (though a very distant second) mobile-only photo network.

However, taking a parallel I’ve used before of there being scope for a Vimeo to Instagram’s YouTube, being a distant second in the mobile only space is not necessary a bad thing.

3 – Related to that, there’s a question mark over how much of a critical mass of users some of the smaller photo-sharing networks really have.

4 – There is a new wave of photo-sharing networks, for example Backspaces, but they are too new to be measured in any meaningful way. Time will tell what kind of uptake they get.

5 – Not only has Flickr gained new users. Crucially, it has kept them, suggesting many are actually lapsed users Flickr won back.

Take a look at the weekly user chart above, which doesn’t show any drop post Christmas.

EyeEm by comparison had a huge spike around Christmas, but some new users then lost interest. Still, the weekly user total is still 3x as high as it was a month ago.

Related articles

• Looking for an Instagram alternative? (framework.latimes.com)
• Insta-Opportunism: Tadaa Sees 500K New Users, 3M Images Ported, Post-Instagram ToS Fall Out (techcrunch.com)
• List of 8 great Instagram alternatives (myfox8.com)
• Starmatic – Kodak’s 1959 Toy Camera Revived As An iOS Social Network (makeuseof.com)

This post comes from my new site, devoted to all things visual social media – find me there! 8mpx.co.uk

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“When we’re talking about the post-PC world, we’re talking about a world where your new device, the devices you use the most, need to be more portable, more personal, and dramatically easier to use than any PC has ever been.” (Apple CEO Tim Cook)

Anyone who has been working in digital communications for a while will know that every year since at least 2007 was meant to be the 'year of mobile.'

Arguably every year has been the year of the mobile when you look back at the strides made on an annual basis.

But for 2013, a better way of phrasing it, may be to talk about the year of the post PC world. Here are 10 stats to underpin that point:

1 – As of 2012, PCs no longer consume the majority of the world's memory chip supply, having dropped to under 50% for the the first time ever in Q2 2012.

2 – According to IDC, sales of desktops and laptops fell by 2.6% between 2011 and 2012, while the number of smartphones and tablets sold jumped by half.

3 – By 2015 there will be more tablets than PCs in the US.

4 – According to analyst Mary Meeker, mobile devices are now responsible for generating 13 per cent of all internet usage worldwide, compared to just four per cent in 2010.

Remember that this figure includes work, as well as consumer Internet traffic and here mobile phones and tablets represented 24% of all online sales in the US on 'Black Monday', compared to just six per cent two years ago.

5 – And worldwide there was a surge in mobile data traffic over Christmas.

In Belgium, the leading mobile operators saw a 100% growth in data, Spanish mobile operator Yoigo saw a 110% increase in mobile data volume while here in the UK, Everything Everywhere was prepared for a 98% data surge over New Year.

6 – In the US itself, more than half of consumer activity online on Christmas Day took place on mobile devices.

7 – Peope are disproportionately likely to buy via those mobile devices. Forrester found that 57% percent of smartphone owners actively seek out new product information compared to 41 percent of non-smartphone owners.

8 – Similarly, 44% of mobile travel searches resulted in a purchase, 30-50% of all restaurant searches are mobile

9 – Last year, 63% of the growth in social media use came through mobile apps and websites

10 – The breakout social media success story of 2012, Instagram, was directly driven by consumers buying smartphones and using them as ther main cameras, with digital camera shipments out of Japan decreasing by 40%+

So are we going to see the end of the PC? Certainly not, laptops and PCs will still have a place, for one thing in the workplace.

But for many consumers that's what they will be – the grey box sitting on their desk. For others who have PCs at home, they will be one way of getting online among many.

When it comes to searching, consuming, interacting or buying, the device that will have primacy though will be the one that people have with them when the impulse to go online hits. More often that not, that won't be a PC or even a laptop.

(This post was written using Pocket, Evernote and Blogsy on an iPad)

I post less frequenty here now – check out my latest project around all things visual social media related at http://www.8mpx.co.uk

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The US Thanksgiving holiday saw a report from IBM telling us that social media referrals had a minimal impact on sales.   We’ve been here before, in October a Forrester analyst claimed the same thing, in response to which I wrote this post.

In his Wall Street Journal article, Tom Gara (as an aside worth following for a good source of info about the Middle East) said that this will need “some serious spinning by social media gurus.”  Sadly, I’m not a guru, but the presentation above is my take on an ever-present issue.

The key point for me?  The concept of looking at social media through the first and not the last click.   So, if you are going to be measuring social media by trying to draw a direct line from tweet to sale, that’s not going to work.  Instead, the decision making process will start with seeing a tweet, then you might do a Google search, then you will read some reviews, then you might ask your Facebook friends what they think and so on.

NB, I post less frequently here now.  My new website, devoted to all things visual social media is here.

Related articles

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I’ve cross-posted this from my new website 8mpx, where I’ve started to look at trends and news around visual social media.  I’ll be posting content on my new site more regularly so I’d love to see you there and hear any comments / feedback!

The decline of the print media market (at least in the UK and US) due to the Internet is now an accepted fact. Recent reports point to the digital camera market heading the same way, thanks to smartphone sales.

Here is the evidence, and what it means:

Over the past few months I’ve endlessly quoted one statistic to showcase the rise of the ‘visual web’. According to Mintel, UK digital camera sales decreased by 29% over five years (the same report also said camcorder sales are down 21%).

In fact, even more powerful are a series of figures I saw in The Taipei Times within an article headlined “new smartphones crush compact camera demand.”

The piece looked at changes within the digital camera market in the Far East, the centre of the industry. One analyst, Nobuo Kurahashi of Mizuho Investors Securities, went as far as to say:

We may be seeing the beginning of the collapse of the compact camera market

The cause of that comment was the fact that global shipments of digital cameras among Japanese firms had decreased by 42% in September compared to a year ago with shipments of cheaper (consumer friendly) compact cameras down by 48%.

The reason is clear, the rise of the smartphone market. Back in June, Nielsen said that 2/3 of mobile buyers in the US were opting for smartphones – I suspect over the recent US Thanksgiving holiday that % was higher still.

Those smartphones are easily as good as digital cameras of a few years ago. For example, six megapixel cameras were the standard entry level camera in 2008, and my guess is that the photo quality of 2008 is something many of us would still consider perfectly adequate today.

Today’s iPhone4s and iPhone5 of course manage eight megapixels (hence the title of this website), and come complete with an app eco-system, such as the recently upgraded camera+ which offers advanced photo features such as ISO and shutter speed, features which are probably lost on a lot of us.

High end camera sales weather the storm

So is the digital camera market dead? No, I don’t think so. I actually don’t think the print market is dead either, but has a future in long-form publishing as opposed to reporting news, which is old as soon as the presses start running.

Hence the parallel with digital cameras. The one area that has been relatively robust has been high end cameras with disposable lenses.

According to the Japanese figures I cite above, shipments in the top end category are down only 7.4%, a lot of which can probably be explained by the global recession.

If you spend upwards of $500 on a digital camera with a disposable lens, you do so for more reasons than just to take pictures. This is your hobby (or even your job) that you’ve personally bought into.

Changing user behaviour + smartphone cameras + image led social networks = a fundamental shift in communication

So what does this mean for those of us working in marketing, communications and social media?

The numbers above speak for themselves, smartphones are increasingly becoming the camera of choice for consumers.

And that is all part of a wider trend.

Not only are they often with their user 24/7, mobile devices (including tablets) are also becoming increasingly important ways to interact on social media, access websites, do your shopping, read the news and various other things we used to exclusively use PCs for.

Networks like Instagram are both symptomatic of, and in turn accelerate the development of, the so-called visual web. These networks turn the simple act of photo-sharing into Twitter style broadcasting.

As a result, Kevin Systrom is largely correct when he implies that Instagram’s future is as a competitor to Twitter, with real time news (in the broadest definition of that term) showcased in pictures first and words second – as opposed to the other way around.

I mean, which would you prefer: A Twitter stream, some of which have pictures, around Hurricane Sandy. Or to have access to hundreds of thousands of raw images as seen, captured and uploaded by people on the ground via Instagram?

With Instagram now having more daily (US) mobile users, Twitter should be worried. No wonder they are introducing filters.

All this represents a fundamental shift in online communication, and one that anyone in brand marketing needs to be aware of.

Exploring this topic further is the ultimate aim of this site. I hope you will find it useful, and any comments do email me – dirk at 8mpx.co.uk

Images – Top image from Vintage Computing, a retro ad for the precursor of the digital camera. Middle image from Camera+ maker TapTap

Related articles

• Smartphones displacing point-and-shoot cameras from Japanese manufacturers (japandailypress.com)
• Your Cellphone as a Digital Camera (answers.com)

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Every so often someone comes out with a study that tries to make the point that investing in social media is a waste of time as it won’t help you sell your stuff.

The latest incarnation is from Forrester (via Business Insider ) analyst Sucharita Mulpuru, who says that less than 1% of online transactions could be traced to a social media post.

I’ll respond in two ways:

That’s one study, here are five that show the opposite
First of all the Forrester research is wildly counter-intuitive. The simple fact of the matter is we do pay attention to consumer opinions online.

Exhibit A – Tripadvisor and Amazon. If social media had no affect on sales why do hoteliers and authors get so anxious about what’s written about them to the extent of (in a few extreme cases) trying to stuff them with fake reviews ? A review site like Tripadvisor is popular precisely because consumers consult it *before* a sale.

1- In fact, according to Nielsen , which conducted a global study of 28,000 consumers in 56 countries, online consumer recommendations are the second most powerful source of ‘brand advertising’ ahead of even editorial endorsements.

Number one was word of mouth endorsement from friends and family which of course sometimes also happen online.

That’s one (fairly persuasive) study that shows the opposite of Sucharita Mulpuru’s report. Here are four more:

2 – 15% of US social media purchasers have bought alcohol due to content they read on a social media site . However the same study by ROI research found that this can increase significantly if that content is about more than just promotions, ad messages and discounts.

For example, Constellation Brands, which has 1.3 million Facebook fans, says 36% have purchased more because of social media.

3 – Constellation Brands raises a key point, it’s about creating a community of advocates who do ultimately buy. According to Bain and co consumers active on social media spend 20-40% more with companies they engage with online than other customers.

4 – And those advocates in turn will persuade other consumers to buy. A comblu study says that super-fans and advocates are 50% more likely to create content that results in purchases

5 – Finally, that positive content and sentiment created by fans is important as social media can certainly work in reverse and harm sales. According to the Convergys Group, a single bad tweet or Facebook comment can cost you 30 customers.

Social media isn’t direct mail
Those statistics I outline above all make a single point – people can create positive sentiment around your brand. That sentiment spreads thanks to online tools. And that sentiment then creates the right mood music for people to buy your products.

However, social media by and large is not a direct response tool, and in that sense the Forrester report is correct. Social media is about everyday human interactions, and human interactions don’t work like that.

I wouldn’t post a Facebook update or send out a tweet along the lines of “hey everyone, click on this link for the new Singer pilsner. It’s refreshing and low calorie too!”

People don’t do it because its crass, you wouldn’t talk like that in real life and so its a sure- fire way to lose friends online. Yet the impetus is sometimes for social media to operate in this fashion, and so sadly some brands talk like that online. No wonder it doesn’t always work as intended.

As a result, I think Sucharita Mulpuru’s study has done us all a favour.

No, social media isn’t comparable to direct mail. And no, I won’t click on a link a friend has sent me to buy a new TV or lawnmower.

However, next time I am browsing in store or online, the chances are when having to choose, I’ll remember him / her raving about it, and I’ll get out my credit card.

Image – Michael Holden

Showcasing the growth of the so-called visual web, Comscore (vla All Things D) today came out with figures to show that, in the US at least, Instagram had 7.3 million daily active users (DAUs) beating Twitter’s 6.9 million.

That’s very significant.  Remember that as recently as last Christmas Instagram only had 16 million users, while at SXSW in March, it passed the 25 million total.

Looking at it over the course of the whole month, Twitter beat Instagram with 29 vs 22 million DAUs.   However, Twitter is of course still 5x the size of Instagram, with c.500 million accounts.

On Twitter , RAAK’s Wessel van Rensburg commented that Twitter has a problem if Instagram is approaching it in size on mobile devices, as they share a lot of similarities from hashtags to loose connections.  On that point, the real story isn’t even so much the user numbers.   It is the fact that while only c.30% of Twitter’s user base is truly active, Instagram has managed to keep users engaged as the network has grown.

Back in March at SXSW, Instagram boss Kevin Systrom claimed that 2/3 of users had logged in the previous day.   I assumed that those numbers would change for the worse.

However, Comscore tells us that the average Instagram user spent 257 minutes on the network over August, compared to 170 minutes for the average Twitter user who accessed it via a mobile.

Or to put it another way, Instagram users spend 51% more time with the service than (mobile) Twitter users.  A big difference in engagement.  Certainly these stats imply something that I’ve picked up from personal experience and observation:  That when it comes to people who aren’t otherwise heavy users of social media, Instagram is doing a lot better at reeling them in.

(Above, chart of the day from Business Insider)

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There’s been a lot of talk over the past month about the ‘socialympics‘:  How Olympics buzz really spread via social media at London2012.

The IPC, the body which runs the Paralympic Games, has now produced a list of stats, which shows how the Paralympics similarly benefitted from social media exposure.

I’ve taken a few highlights from the news release they issued this afternoon, and added a few comments and supplementary figures onto them:

1 – Nearly 2 million people visited www.paralympic.org, the official website of the IPC.  One in six visitors came from the UK, with USA, Germany, Poland and Canada making up the top five visiting countries

2 – There were close to 9 million views of videos featuring London 2012 sporting action or ceremonies uploaded to www.youtube.com/paralympicsporttv

3 – The IPC’s official Facebook group www.facebook.com/ParalympicGames grew by 130% during the Games and now has over 136,000 likes

4 – Over 10 million unique users visited london2012.com more than 25 million times during the Paralympics and a further 5.8 million people upgraded their London 2012 App to the Paralympic version

5 – Individual athletes also benefitted: Great Britain’s 100m T44 gold medallist Johnnie Peacock saw his Facebook fan page grow by 3,258% during 12 days of competition.   Meanwhile South African Oscar Pistorius added 30,000 followers during the games

6 – Google released figures today claiming 100 million regular Google+ visitors, which produced a fair amount of head scratching.   The IPC Google+ page was however certainly well received, getting 50,000 followers

7 – There have been 350,000 views of 600 behind the scenes videos produced by athletes as part of a Samsung sponsorship.    As an aside, this is one of the better commercial tie-ins I saw during London 2012 and is worth checking out 

8 – On August 25th, the IPC’s official Twitter feed had 28,509 followers, on 10 September (the day after the games finished) it had 39,839.

9 – The UK Paralympics team saw an even greater increase with Twitter followers increasing from  70,239 to 108,309 during the same period

10 – Finally during the games itself, Nielsen told us that a staggering 12% of UK social media messages were about the Paralympics

As I posted on my Olympics Jux site, I was simply blown away by the Paralympics and the stats above prove I certainly wasn’t alone.   The online element of the games was particularly important given that US London2012 broadcaster NBC gave the Paralympics no live coverage at all, which puts the strong traffic figures from the US to the IPC website (which streamed live video) into perspective.

Image – Greenwich Equestrian 2012 venue

Related articles

• ‘London 2012. Made in Britain’: standing ovation as Lord Coe closes the Paralympic Games
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Two years ago I posed the question of whether the age of search might be – slowly – coming to a close.  This was in response to US stats showing all search had declined 16% year on year with Google showing a 17% drop.

Though the figures evened themselves out, it could be that I asked the questions two years two early based on the latest figures from Hitwise.

According to Paid Content these show that UK searches in August were down 40 million year on year.  Hitwise itself admitted that in addition to the Olympics skewing web stats, “the growing significance of social networks to websites” was a factor.

It should be noted that this is 40 million out of a total search volume of 2.21 billion, so obviously there’s no reason for brands to scrap their search marketing budgets yet.

However, the evidence is also clear that a strategy that has search and social working together improves search results.

As far as three years back, Comscore found a 50% CTR increase when consumers were exposed to paid search and social media in tandem.

Meanwhile a study this year by Search Metrics found that five of the top six factors relating to a high Google rank were social media related.

Image from Kesco via Creative Commons 

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Over the past six weeks I’ve stopped doing what I’ve been doing on social media for the past four years…posting pretty much non-stop about social media.

Instead I by and large turned my attention to London2012, first the Olympics and then the Paralympics.  This has included pausing this blog in favour of a jux photo-diary (greenwicholympicdiary.jux.com).

Though I didn’t plan it like this, it actually resulted in a six week detox from social media business as usual (outside the day job).  As London2012 draws to a close tonight, I’ve thought about how that’s worked out for me.

First of all, on Twitter I appear to have lost 40-50 odd followers.  Fair enough really, the Paralympics in particular didn’t have nearly as much exposure in the US as it did here. A shame given the 227 US Paralympians representing their country.

But as a result I must have appeared like people I occasionally see tweeting non stop about college football or major league baseball, where I wonder what on earth they are on about – and more to the point where I think ‘what’s this got to do with me?’

I have seen two positives though.

First of all I’m now far more informed about my local area, Greenwich (London), than I was previously.

Fairly soon into my Olympic tweeting I attracted the attention of local activists who objected to Greenwich Park being used for equestrian events, and from there I actually started tapping into a whole range of local twitter users.

Never mind social media linking me to people half way around the world, using social media differently has connected me more to my immediate community.

Related to that, I now follow a different mix of people.  The social media experts are still there.  So are plenty of people in sports, the Paralympic movement, and quite simply other Olympic / Paralympic enthusiasts from all walks of life.

The range of content I see in my stream is different and more varied, and I think I’m better off for it.

It’s benefitted me personally, I feel more optimistic and grounded with the real world.  As an aside I’ve also been able to personally test out a few other social networks with my paralympic content like Jux and Eyeem.

It’s not rocket science, but its a reminder that’s been said many times elsewhere, that those of us in agencies can easily start living in a bubble.

In fact, I was reminded of something I posted a few years ago, a Dutch marketer, Martijn van Osch, who rationed his media intake to the bare minimum and – perhaps counter intuitively given his job – found he was better off professionally  for it.   His original piece is worth a read, some of what he said resonated as I looked back over the past few weeks and thought about the debate those of us who work in social media always have about filtering out the noise.

Those of you who have followed me on social media these past few weeks, thank you for bearing with me!  (Almost) Normal service with stats based posts resumes this week!

(Above, US women’s wheelchair basketball team leaves the North Greenwich arena after a quarter final win over Canada)