By CAPRI GAHR
Student Reporter
The Instagram feeds have got a lot bouncier.
The creators of Instagram have been creating new apps just to work with Instagram. Is this a trend in the app creating industry? Where does it start and where does it end?
The Boomerang app, which caught on quickly, isn’t the first app created to improve content for a different app. App creators have been making apps to make other apps more interesting.
Boomerang was created to play and replay the same moment over and over. One user, who wished to remain anonymous, has over twenty Boomerangs on their Instagram. They said, “Sometimes Instagram gets a little boring but there is always something new that comes along and revives it. Updates, Boomerang, Layout. They all kind of show up and people go crazy.”
On my Instagram, I used to see Boomerangs everywhere. Now, there are fewer on my feed. Intrigued by this phenomenon of apps for other apps, I decided to take note of every photo on my feed for ten days.
After one hour of scrolling, I would mark down each photo or video that was edited by an outside source, any Boomerangs, any collages, or graphically animated edits.
I didn’t rule out advertisements because marketing companies often try to catch trends before they disappear. The average amount of photos that were in these parameters each day was nearly 40 pictures.
Nearly forty people or businesses a day would use a different app to help create content for their social media feed. Layout and Boomerang are both made by the creators of Instagram. Other outside apps appear frequently as well.
One of these apps is called InstaBeauty. Despite its name, it was created by ThinkPHP. ThinkPHP is a hub for creators to go to so they can make new apps. They support nearly 80million different content creators. I downloaded this app and checked out its features. Not only can you adjust lighting and fun colors, you can adjust eye size, body size, and blemishes.
As an experiment, I went on the Apple App store and searched Instagram. There were over a thousand results. While only five of them were Instagram products. Facebook’s search had eleven different apps all made by Facebook and over a thousand results from other creators.
The creator of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, released this statement about the future of video editing apps like Boomerang. He said, “For Instagram to succeed in the long run, video has to be a core part.”
Statistically, smart phone users spend almost 90% of their media usage time just on apps.
There is even an application that helps bridge the gap between the different smartphones and help businesses create their own app. Xamarin helps people create content that can be shared across different media platforms.
This software is helping people create apps for other apps. Creators for Android apps even lay out tasks like, one app sending you to another or one app allowing a different app to perform a task. On Android’s website you can find these lessons. They explain why and how you would need to do this.
This phenomenon of apps for other apps has broken the boundary of having one app to do it all. Now we need multiple apps to do one thing. This gives us another question that needs to be answered. Have creators run out of new app ideas or are they sticking to what is making them money?