“ Viewing photos is not just about the ephemeral nature of snapshots, it’s about going back into your bedroom and opening your shoeboxes.
— Kevin Systrom on the launch of Instagram 3.0, which introduces PhotoMaps and puts the focus on location as primary search mechanic.
Although Instagram is still about putting up snapshots of life on the go, Systrom says that they learned geography might a bigger motivator to browse image content than the purely chronological feed. The missing discovery and was always a downer with Instagram and something Berlin-based EyeEm mastered from the start. EyeEm’s geo-located city albums as well as topical albums help you to visually connect with new people around you - or find those with similar interests.
This is the direction Instagram is heading - a visual discovery tool. “I want to tune into the London Olympics, or Burning Man by using location the same way you explore via hashtags or via a profile,” Systrom tells TC. “We eventually want 100% of photos to be geo-tagged.” Like a visual time travel engine, Systrom hopes Instagram could become your “backstage pass into anywhere in the world.”
Love Pictures? Love Hacking? - Save the DATE for PHOTO HACK DAY — SEPTEMBER 22/23
The snap-shot loving and sharing EyeEm crew is hosting another Photo-Hack-Day with a little help from a lot of friends: Facebook plus fellow Berlin start-ups Amen, 6Wunderkinder, Toast, Tweek.tv, Loopc.am … are joining the party.
The EyeEm team is known to mix a love for great photography with solid engineering and CTO Ramzi Rizk earned the title of “best coding photographer” from his founding team mates.
EyeEm MasterClasses have also become hugely popular and produced some amazing shots:
Got an idea for a hack? You can still submit suggestions here. Would love to have a mosaic print feature per album/user. Any takers?
Camera, Lights, Action!
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“This is NOW” rides the real-time-wave | Live Instagram Feed tunes into London / Sydney / New York / Tokyo
Remember the awesome CitySounds.fm? Hacked together by Henrik Berggren & Eric Wahlforss at a Music Hackday back in 2009, the simple and genius idea was to cluster SoundCloud tracks into City Channels, match it with pictures from Flickr and assemble all into a simple and beautiful layout. All was build in 48 hours and it even came with an iPhone app. Back in January we talked with Henrik & Eric about their love for hacks and early DJ encounters.
“This is NOW” is equally straight forward: Instagram images are grouped by cities into a live feed and dramatized with a ticking local time clock. Currently on display: London / Sydney / New York / Tokyo. The ‘Made in Sydney’ project picks up the real-time location trend and shows that simple data filters can do wonders. Berlin-based photo sharing and discovery app EyeEm started from the beginning with an album feature that let’s you easily choose different city streams - from Berlin to Buenos Aires, Copenhagen to Cape Town.
We’re looking forward to more of these real-time visualization projects to put method to the picture madness.
// MASTERCLASS EyeEm x Gidsy // — This is a perfect example of 2 Berlin start-ups joining forces: popular mobile photo app EyeEm offered a street-photography masterclass on Gidsy and these are the picturesque footprints across Berlin.
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Street art + photography have been at the very core of EyeEm and it brings back memories of my first EyeEm encounter: a mobile photo exhibit in Berlin. As we learned during a recent visit to the EyeEm studio, this was actually the result of a lucky accident…
Back in 2009, CEO Florian Meissner had lost his camera on the very first day of a new job at a photo magazine in New York and was forced to surrender to an iPhone as his one and only lens. He got hooked on mobile photography, published a book and “the rest is history”.
VISUAL DISCOVERY
EyeEm’s point of difference has always been a combination of deep routed passion for photography, mixed with great engineering talent. CTO Ramzi Rizk - dubbed by the team as ‘the best coding photographer’ - is the mastermind behind EyeEm’s data cube, which brings method to the picture madness. With mobile images sky-rocketing, the biggest issue for mobile photography is discovery and consumption. “How do I find images of places, topics and events that I really care about and that have an impact on my day-to-day decision making”, summarizes Florian the problem EyeEm wants to solve. EyeEm’s rigorous tagging system allows clustering of topics and locations and puts real relevance to mobile photo sharing. One can only imagine how valuable this ‘strictness’ will become in the future.
Instagram might have the masses, but the discovery process was always either silo’ed (friends and followers) or random (most popular). Whereas when you fire up EyeEm in a city, you automatically see a picture story of what’s happening around you. You can also follow albums from street-art, music, architecture, fashion and food to portraits and black/white photography. Ultimately, you are visually connecting with people around the globe who share the same interests. And it works: I have met like-minded ‘mobile photo maniacs’ in Toronto, Copenhagen, Barcelona and New York — just through images. — Lights, Camera, Action.
//DARE TO ASK: Team EyeEm// — We visit the 4 founders of mobile photography startup EyeEm in their Berlin studio and talk stolen cameras, data cubes and meeting perfect strangers (through images).
Source: vimeo.com
