Facebook’s interesting year
This has been a big year for Facebook. The company has seen its developer team and application center grow mightily in size, with several new company acquisitions. With those applications now coming in house, Facebook has gained access to a new consumer base and given its traditional users access to new products. Even though Facebook has grown through buying other companies, Facebook itself has been suffering through some problems. Facebook’s stock finally went public during May of this year, opening to an impressive number of $38.23. However, Facebook’s stock numbers quickly dipped and has since fallen to three quarters of its initial offering price. Many users and pundits believe that Facebook has already reached its peak growth, and the stock’s fall has only fueled speculation. Not to mention that Facebook’s users have begun to use the service less often and interacted with friends at a much less frantic pace. Facebook has been looking for a change, something that could make its users more active and bring new ones into the fold. Out of Facebook’s recent purchases, Instagram could be the application that starts that change. Bought for over 1 billion, Instagram is a popular, powerful camera application that’s magic comes from its simplicity. Instagram’s interface is clear, smooth, and easy to use. Different effects are only a click away, and usage has exploded to the point where users are uploading millions of photos per day.
How Instragram could change Facebook
Both Facebook and Instragram are mobile applications that allow users to access their information on the go. But that’s where the similarities stop. While Facebook has a much more sophisticated network and is the more mature company, Instragram has the better photo software and greater potential for growth at this point. Facebook chose to buy Instragram instead of compete with it on a software level. What this means is that many of Instragram’s features will soon be integrated into Facebook, either as an in-house app or as effects that users can add to their personal photos. It’s hard to argue with the move, which will give Facebook a much stronger camera feature and will give them a new market of Instagram users to interact with. If more users are sharing Instagram photos on Facebook, this could be the jump start Facebook needs to get its users to start interacting again. And if that happens, Facebook’s stock could shoot back up later in the calendar year.
This post is written by John Lewis and he works at PriceCollate as a writer. You can win free ipad from Pricecollate by participating in contest .