So recently there was this huge acquisition by Facebook. Worth a billion dollars, right before they went public. This huge acquisition created many admirers who also want to make an app and sell it for a billion dollars.

But there is a problem – it’s just that it’s the worst idea in the field.

Why?

Because the concept isn’t cool. See, Instagram offers an easy way to snap and share beautiful photos of stuff (mostly food)

Putting various vintage filters makes these images looks cool, amazing and artistic. (and hipster)

Whenever you take a picture out of your iPhone and add these filters, it just feels amazing and awesome. It serves its purpose of making people look less ugly. Making horrible photographs out of your phone looks amazing. I think this is the first time something like this happened.

Before that, all the cell phone photos looked damn ugly. I remember I hated taking picture out of my Nokia 6600’s VGA camera. But again, the best camera is the one you have with you.

And who had the time to sit back and edit the photos? 90% of people are not photographers, they just wanna share some cool photographs.

People just wanna take a snap and instantly want to put it up on Facebook, twitter, Google plus and what not. Instagram is the next Flickr or probably even bigger. Maybe the YouTube of instant photos.

This was really an amazing concept.

But a lot of people are trying to do the same with videos.

Just because it worked with photos, doesn’t mean it will work with videos.

Because there are a lot of apps out there who tried to be the Instagram for videos and they failed. Some got moderate success but nowhere even near to Instagram. Something was still missing.

Here is why:–

Because people do not want to add vintage filters to their videos. They want crystal clear videos with all the details and depth of the field visible.

They want the video to look like it has been shot with a Red® Epic instead of phone. They want the instant sharing and do not want to spend more than 15 seconds on editing, as a matter of fact they don’t even like to edit the videos.

They want the audio to be crystal clear with all the voices stable, less noise and variations in the final sound.

And guess who can actually do this very well?

YouTube? – Probably

I dunno. Recently I was working on a similar app and I got a lot of question that whether I was building an Instagram for videos?

No I’m not because it is not a good idea.

I think if Apple is willing to implement this type of functionality with their native camera app then that would be awesome.

Let’s see what happens next.

But the bottom line is that – stop copying other guys who had success with a specific concept.

Because:

1. You gotto be the number one and the biggest player in that niche if you want to dominate and succeed in the long run. Second place has no value in long run.
2. Just because strategy A worked for company B that worked on a concept D doesn’t mean it will work for you. You gotto come up with breakthrough ideas and technologies that you believe can change the way people do their stuff.

Whatever you do, do it fast. Don’t wait for the right time because there is no such thing as right time. Go and blatantly take action and test out new things.

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Update:

Facebook has released their new photo app and it makes one point clear that instagram is gonna keep going like this. No change no integration. Just a quick thought.