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"This post is part of Mashable\u2019s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.\nName: Instagram\nQuick Pitch: Instagram is a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures.\nGenius Idea: Instagram speaks to the secret photographer inside us all by providing a nearly foolproof way to snap remarkable photos and share them with the world.\nThe iPhone application is free to use and is deceivingly simple in purpose and function \u2014 snap a photo, select a photo-enhancing filter and upload. It sounds like an install-it-and-forget-it application, but that couldn't be further from the truth; Instagram nails the social aspect and engineers an ego-driven, must-revisit experience as compelling as Twitter's.\nInstagram is composed of four key application components: Feed, Popular, Share and News. The core of the service is built around the \"Share\" feature, a.k.a photo sharing. This is where you'll go to snap your photos and choose from one of 11 filters that will make your otherwise mundane images pop with color, mood or personality. \n\n\n\n\nBut, Instagram does more than dress up photographs \u2014 there's plenty of apps like Hipstamatic that have been providing that service for some time. So, after you select a filter, you can then add a description and a place (via Foursquare's API), and choose to share it with Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Tumblr, or use the photo to check in to Foursquare. \nThe \"Feed\" is the in-app place where you can view the stream of photos your friends are sharing. This area isn't extraordinary in feature set \u2014 only allowing comments and likes \u2014 and yet once you build up a small following and start following your friends (you can connect with your Twitter and Facebook friends), the feed comes alive and morphs into an active social network around great-looking photographs.\nThe \"News\" section will alert you to new comments, likes and followers. There's even a cute, orange pop-up bubble that notifies you of these actions as they happen, while you're immersed in the feed.\n\n\n\n\nYou can click the \"Popular\" tab to check out the most popular photos (as voted by the community through comments and likes) across the service.  If you're anything like this user, you'll soon become obsessed with attempting to find the perfect shot and filter in the hopes that your photo will become popular.  \nPassion Meets Casual Photography\n\n\n\n\nIt's hard to pinpoint what makes Instagram such a compelling application to return to, but it does have the niche community essence of Tumblr, the did-my-post-get-noticed? draw of Twitter and the social networking ease of the Facebook \"Like.\"\n\"I think we're reigniting passion for casual photography,\" says cofounder Kevin Systrom on the application's rapid-fire rise to the top of Apple's App Store.\nThe story goes that Instagram went live in the App Store just after midnight PST on Wednesday morning (October 6), and not more then 10 seconds later, the team noticed signups taking place overseas. By 6 a.m., Instagram was so overwhelmed with traffic \u2014 thanks in part to a barrage of coverage and tweets \u2014 that its servers buckled under the pressure. Six days later, Instagram is a bona fide hit and the team is now focused on building to scale. \nThere's just something about the application that resonates with users (this one included) so much so that Systrom says \"it has taken on a life of its own \u2014 it's definitely no longer our product anymore. It belongs to the community.\"\nThe community can expect the most immediate release to include bug fixes, address reliability and improve upload and app speed. The next big release, however, will include additional free filters, better discovery and even more integration with third-party social services. Eventually, Systrom will shift gears and focus on a business model, but for now, he seems content with giving users more of the features they want and not messing with a good thing.\nSponsored by Microsoft BizSpark\nBizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/10/12/instagram/>