My Journey Through Online Photography

Today Instagram announced a new service named "Instagram Direct," a service that allows users to send a private message containing a photo to up to 15 followers. Services such as Instagram allow users to post unlimited photos from the convenience of their phone. Years ago, users of social media never would have been able to use features such as unlimited uploads, especially from a phone.

Back in 2005 I opened up my first Myspace profile. This site was all the rage at the time, and people would beg their friends to comment on their photos. Users were only allowed to have 12 photos on their profile at a time, so it wasn't hard for friends to comment on every single photo posted on a profile. Prior to Myspace, online photos were hosted on sites such a Flickr. While these were useful sites for storing photos online, it lacked the social media component that sites like Myspace had.

Myspace's frugal photo storage was one of the reasons people started to switch over to Facebook. By 2007, Facebook was a popular rival to Myspace and was gaining a momentous amount of users. Once a site reserved for college students, by the time anyone was allowed to sign up for Facebook users were taking advantage of Facebook's features. This included an ability to post whole albums of photos, something Myspace users could only dream about.

Facebook continued to gain users, iPhones started to see the light of day, and Myspace started dying...despite the fact that it adopted the unlimited photo storage feature that Facebook had. Around 2009 Facebook started seeing competition from Twitter, a microblogging site that allowed users to post status updates straight from his or her phone. While Twitter wasn't known for photo sharing, it's up-to-the-minute updates set the ground work for other sites.

Now Twitter, a site that's still very relevant, is complimented by Instagram. This site allows users to post photos straight from their phones for all of their followers to see. But the last of private messaging (until today) was a turn off. Snapchat was introduced, and it allowed users to send each other private photos. Initially photos only lasted 1-10 seconds with no possibilities of screenshots, but now the screen shot feature is available. Of course, no one wants to send nudes now that their naked photo can be screenshot into eternity.

So what's next? Of course there's Instagram Directed, but trends change quickly. I'd guess that GIFing will catch on soon. It will be the lovechild of Instagram and Vine (a videos haring service similar to Instagram). Until then, enjoy sending your Instagram photos to just a couple of people.