Vodafone blog

To stop using Instagram, or to just complain about the $1 Billion Facebook buyout (on Twitter) and continue using it anyway, because it still makes mobile photography awesome and easy to share?

That’s the question millions of hipsters and early-adopting ‘trend-setters’ the world over will be asking themselves today upon hearing the news about Facebook’s purchase of Instagram.

Only yesterday, whilst making the most of what’s left of the warm weather on a walk around some old military ruins in Sydney’s Northern beaches, I found myself snapping away, applying filters, tagging the location and posting to Facebook and Twitter selectively.

The results were pleasing as ever, drawing in comments from friends, with one shot in particular (below) inspiring a professional photographer friend of mine to fire out some advice on how I could improve on the shot if I’d have brought up the greens and blacks slightly and removed the filter. The actual comment read:

"I’ll bet the original looks better, less Instagram, more vibrant colour."

I did remind him I’m an amateur. I don’t have his skills. But I do have a free app that makes my shots look like the ones he takes with his $5000 camera.

For me, Instagram serves as a catalyst to actually capturing moments from my life; forever the ‘wanabe’ photographer, just lacking the actual skills and patience to be any good at it.

Instagram allows me to create shots that I actually enjoy sharing with my friends, rather than being too disappointed with the image quality to bother uploading them.

Regardless of any emotive reasoning for loving the app, functionally it just works.

Instant upload to all my desired social accounts, minimal but effective features etc; for me it was one of the first truly simplistic yet entirely fulfilling social apps.

So, inevitable mass-faux-shunning aside, the purchase of Instagram by Facebook will change nothing for me at least. Hopefully Zuck’ and crew won’t change too much, too soon, as they head towards the inevitable monetisation of the app. When they do, let’s hope it’s all for the better, and promotes the sharing of even more magic moments across the social web.

The timeliest part of all this for the social media team here at Vodafone Australia is that we fired up our very own Instagram account a few weeks back.

You’ll find us by searching Vodafone_AU in the app.

We hope you’ll follow us as we do our best to entertain, inspire and confuse you with our snaps throughout the year.

We may even set some themes for you to join in with us on, and chuck out some prizes for the best contributions.

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