Instagram was published in October, 2010 and it had attracted 3 hundred million users by the end of 2014. Facebook acquired Instagram with the price of 1 billion dollars and Instagram's market capitalization reached to 35 billion dollars within 3 years. Instagram is like a miracle of photography social media.
A key word of its success could be "calmness". Instagram actually breaks an important rule of most popular social media platforms - it gives up the hyperlink function. Users are not allowed to download images as well. Besides, images can be searched by tags. Though Instagram does not have a lot of functions, on the other hand, it is simple enough. Users normally just do two things while using Instagram: view the images then slide to next one, or "like" the image. The limit of functions makes Instagram a place just to view images or videos. It does not have more functions; it does not need them either. Its "calmness" makes it unique and makes the users enjoy their experience of simple social network.
VSCO cam
When users use VSCO cam for the first time, they would be definitely attracted by its huge collection of brilliant filters. The filters’ application levels can be adjusted from 0.0 - 12.0. After applying the filter, users could adjust the brightness, contrast, color temperature, highlight and shadows, grayscale, and dark corner effect of the images. The tint of highlight and shadow can also be adjusted.
As a developing photography social media platform, different from Instagram, VSCO cam does not have the interactive functions like followers, "like"s, or comments. The only interactive function it provides is to follow your interested photographers, save a copy of an image you like, and publish the image to your persona collection. Certainly, the original copyrights of the images are carried all the time, so there is no copyright infringement issue - copyright protection is the basis of a professional photography social media platform.
More Than Photograph