The culture of Instagram images is far different from Facebook, which is focused around comments and likes from friends who are in the social circle. 

"While many people post their Instagram photos to Facebook and Twitter, the majority of discussions occurs on Instagram, limiting the interaction to those who have smartphones," says Michaelanne Dye, PR and social media officer at Georgia Tech College of Computing. 

Facebook offers personal information about users (birthday, gender, hometown, current town, relationship status and more), while Instagram includes little more than a user's name, profile pic, how many photos they have posted and number of followers. The decreased level of social pressure in this space actually makes it easier to start a conversation.

"Unlike Facebook, image sharing on Instagram is not about connecting with long lost friends or making plans for the weekend," says Dye. "The experience revolves around the quality and creativeness of the image. That, combined with the fact that not everyone is on Instagram (unlike Facebook), provides the feeling of a more closed community in which you have a little bit more anonymity." 

Instagram does not allow for private messaging between users either. Depending on the Instagram user's settings, every comment or like is either visible to the public or completely private. Users can choose to watch from the sidelines too, if they prefer. Unlike other mobile photo-sharing apps, it's impossible to share Instagram images with a select group of friends or followers.  

Instagram is a fascinating way to get to know what types of images other visual thinkers are drawn to. 

"In short, Instagram has created a strong social networking site that focuses strictly on the art of photo sharing and visual engagement," says Dye. "It's really about taking a photo and allowing it to become an object of value to other individuals." 

There were conflicting reports of what was blocked and when. Despite the outages, Pakistan's Minister of Interior, Rehman Malik, tweeted that Twitter and Facebook were not going to be blocked in the country, and asked citizens to "please ignore the rumors.

Twitter spokesman Gabriel Stricker said Twitter had not taken down tweets or made changes before Pakistan stopped blocking the site.

The ministry restored access to Twitter on Sunday evening.

Earlier this year, Twitter announced that it would be "blocking certain tweets in certain countries," yet it did not go into explicit detail about what types of tweets it was referring to.

Pakistan went ahead and banned many curse words from texts in November 2011. Many of the words appear to be made up.

Flag image via Shutterstock.

Twitter announced plans to support the proposed Do Not Track HTTP header, a W3C standard-in-the-making that will let users keep the messaging service from tracking their browsers. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, currently a user "only needs to have logged into Facebook or Twitter once in the past month. The sites will continue to collect browsing data, even if the person closes their browser or turns of their computers, until that person explicitly logs out of their Facebook or Twitter accounts."

Twitter claims that it does not use such browsing data and deletes it "quickly," according to a Twitter spokesperson, who added that in theory Twitter could use the data to "surface better content" for users.

"Twitter didn't have any documentation on how they handled third-party browsing history," says Brian Kennish, co-founder of Disconnect Tools, which makes anti-tracking software. "I’m really glad to see Twitter make this change now."

Twitter confirmed its commitment to supporting Do Not Track via a tweet from the official @Twitter account. However, the dispatched stopped short of revealing a schedule for implementing the feature. "As the Federal Trade Commission's CTO, Ed Felten, mentioned this morning, Twitter now supports Do Not Track," said Carolyn Penner, a spokesperson for Twitter. "We applaud the FTC's leadership on Do Not Track, and are excited to provide the benefits of Do Not Track."

Still, Twitter's timing is impeccable, evoking an implicit comparison with Facebook on the eve of its highly anticipated initial public offering. Facebook has faced ongoing criticism over its privacy policies. The social networking juggernaut does not support Do Not Track.

Sometimes less is more. At least, that's how this social video app works. The key to this is in its limited ability to choose. Think about going to the grocery store: When there are 12 types of ketchup to choose from, everything can quickly become overwhelming and bizarre. Now reimagine that scene with only four types of ketchup. Much better, right? It's what ReadWriteWeb recommends.

Social video app Viddy has reportedly just passed the 15 million user mark, so it must be doing something right. Zuckerberg and Snoop are both onboard. (I know that because I am busy following both of them.)

On Viddy, much like Twitter, users decide to follow others, and others follow them. It takes time to gather a steady base of followers and people you want to follow, but much like any social media platform, if you invest time in it you will end up having a positive experience. Whereas on Twitter you tweet text, on Viddy you share video clips that can be up to 15 seconds long.

The next step is to attach a filter - Snoop Dogg, for example, prefers the vintage one. There are only four types of filters to choose from: none, vintage, black and white or the color-popping crystal. Select your audience - followers only or everyone - and then post the Viddy to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr too, if you'd like. 

Viddy is short with users - real short. It requires users to record and submit videos that are 15 seconds or less. In fact, even a 10 second video on this site would do the trick. There are no tunes or themes; much like Instagram, it is only about the filter "magic." In this sense, it seems most likely to be acquired by Facebook in the same way that Instagram was.

Viddy's filter options are a bit of a snoozer, but the "vintage" one does the trick in the same way that every Instagram filter that came before it does. For a more classic look, go with "black & white" or the uber-saturated "crystal" filter. There are more filters available for a price. But with only 15 seconds to shoot, it might be better to go nude.

Not only has Viddy created a new form of video - the 15-second-long "viddy" is certainly not the same as a YouTube clip or Vimeo video - it limits your options. That is not something that competitors Socialcam or Klip can do.

When it comes to content, Socialcam is a mixed bag. Its videos don't have a time limit, it encourages the use of various filters and it offers mostly cheesy music overlays that may not always make sense with the selected imagery. This social video app does offer a lot more premade options for creativity, but it also relies too heavily on filters and audio.

Klip is another competitor. It does not offer filters or a time limit on videos. What Klip does offer in terms of privacy, however, is something that neither Viddy nor Socialcam has down pat. On Klip, users can create their own Circles in much the same function as Google+ Circles but with a more Path-like functionality.

"You can define your private circle," says Klip CEO Alain Rossmann. "It is a simple but powerful concept, and allows you to have a subset of followers who might be your family, classmates and these growing user types for people who want to communicate but do not want everyone else to see what they are saying."

Do users care enough to actually take the time to create personalized and ever-changing circles? Probably not. In that sense, Viddy comes out as the quickest, most easy-to-use social video app. Will it get snatched up by Facebook in the near term?

Like most things on the Internet, Pinstagram happened fast.

"We were joking one evening about how Instagram is worth $1 billion and how Pinterest's valuation might already be in the $500 million range," says co-founder Brandon Leonardo. "And we were thinking about the idea of a Twitter for Facebook, what that would be like. Then I could tell Pek started thinking about it. The gears started turning; he was visualizing a Pinterest for Instagram."

Not more than 24 hours later, Pongpaet had already coded and designed it. This sort of fast turnaround is pretty natural for Pongpaet and Leonardo, who come from a hackathon "get stuff out as fast as possible and ask questions later" type of background.

If this sort of idea had popped up within a larger company setting, for example, it would have "taken months," says Pongapaet.

Since Pinstagram's debut just a few weeks ago, the site has already seen about 6,400 Facebook likes of Instagram images, thousands of tweets and a few hundred pins.

Pinstagram: An Indicator of the Evolving Visual Web

Services like Pinterest and Instagram are integral to the future of the visual Web. No longer do people send photos to document memories; they are lifestreaming as it all happens, with pictures telling the story. It's no wonder that Facebook snatched up Instagram while it still had the chance. 

"The visual medium has always had international appeal," says Pongapaet. "Sending pictures is very common. If you stick to English, you'll alienate a lot of people. Visual mediums let you transcend all barriers. It takes seconds to process a photo."

What about Webstagram, the Instagram Web viewer? Isn't this a sufficient way to view Instragram images on the Internet? For some, it's perfect. But like many news Web sites, Webstagram is organized around "popular," "my photos," "liked," "hot," "photo of the day" and more. It feels more like a news website and less like a glossy, Pinterest-like magazine.

"The reason I built Pinstagram is because this is my world view of how Instagram should look on the Web," says Pongapaet. "Our core focus is to recreate the Instagram experience on the desktop and to be able to extend that to our users."

Not everyone wants to see their Instagrams in a Pinterest-like layout, however, and Pongapaet acknowledges that.

"There are always different interpretations," he says. "That's what great about art, about having different APIs - people all have different interpretations."

Pinstagram just integrated into Facebook Timeline. As the Instagram-Facebook integration continues to rollout, so will this nifty Pinterest-Instagram hybrid beast.

Doodle.ly has already topped 30,000 users. The main audience comprises women 18-24, followed by men of the same age. The third biggest userbase on Doodle.ly is young girls ages 13-17 years of age.

What is it about Doodle.ly that attracts users? Pierre Graf, a user based in Lyon, France, describes his Doodle.ly experience as similar to "sailing on the sea, you have the absolution liberty of your destination and what you're going to accomplish." For a glass screen and mild finger-focused interaction, doodlers are able to accomplish quite a bit. Here's a drawing by Mr. Graf, in fact. 

Social Games Be Gone: Doodle.ly Is For Loners

Doodle.ly users range from the more serious artist types to casual users who are already using Draw Something, which continues to lose users. Doodle.ly describes itself as "Draw Something meets Instagram." It does not connect to Facebook in the way that Draw Something does, and it also isn't focused around competition. Doodle.ly is like the casual cousin of the super social Draw Something. While there are plenty of competitions hosted by Doodle.ly for outside entitites, these contests are not focused on beating your friends, or even incorporating your friends into the mix. On Doodle.ly, you can practice with ease, and then share those doodles out to Facebook and Twitter, if you so desire. The social sketchpad nature of Doodle.ly makes it perfect for those who just want to practice, quietly, online or on their iPads. 

Contests on Doodle.ly are social, but not social networked. In a contest for the NHL team the New Jersey Devils, Doodle.ly users were asked to draw a play-off themed doodle. Winners would see their doodles come to life on rally towel drawings. This week's contest focuses around doodling a summer sun. It seems like a pretty easy task, but try it yourself - doodling takes time and energy. 

Winners must practice often, and stay true to their doodle.ly visions. Users, start your fingers!

Drawing can be a social experience, but it is often times best as a solitary, nongameified couple of hours. Not everything needs to involve another person. The danger of these sorts of games is that the user believes they are connecting and communicating with another human. 

The most awkward aspect of the Draw Something game? The mechanism of starting to "play" a game with another user, who might either be a Facebook friend, someone you've invited to play via email, or just a random person who is selected by Draw Something. 

I Sent You a Drawing. Did You Get It? Oh, Ok.

I was thinking about Draw Something yesterday afternoon, during a haircut in-person with real people (technology has yet to master the virtual haircut experience). I walked into the salon, and the receptionist had his iPhone out and was playing Draw Something. He stopped momentarily to check my name off - I was almost 10 minutes late, but that was okay because the hair dresser was running late and he was playing Draw Something. Then he went back to his game.

I sat down and asked for a haircut. Let's got shorter this time, I said. My hair is feeling scraggly and the summer is coming, so I'd prefer to have it off of my shoulders. As the cut began, I couldn't help but ask my hair dresser about Draw Something.

"Do you use Draw Something?" I asked. We'd already been talking about Pinterest and peoples' pinning habits, so this didn't seem like a far-out question.

Another hair dresser answered for her. 

"Oh yeah, I owe you a drawing," she said. "Sorry, I haven't been on there in awhile. I'll get back on and do it soon." 

I stopped by a cafe after my haircut and decided to test it out. I invited three friends to play; none of them responded. Then I started playing with a random person, picked a la Draw Something. We played a round. She sent me a drawing of pink. I guessed that it was PINK. Win. Get coins.

I answered back with a river, an easy squiggly blue line through a dense white pixel field. She hasn't replied yet.

Later in the evening, I had dinner with a friend who tends to get into these social games. For a time, anyway. I had invited her to play with me; she hasn't had a chance to check Draw Something in a few days. It's OK.

The Rise and Fall of Draw Something... or Something

Draw Something became No. 1 in the App Store shortly after its launch on February 1, 2012. It has since dropped, and the paid version of the app is now No. 4 in the App Store. People are downloading Draw Something and definitely still using it, but not in the way they were during its initial bump and subsequent purchase by Zynga for $180 million. After the acquisition, Zynga's daily traffic went up 25 percent. That was back in March 2012.

Nowadays, Draw Something is losing millions of users, proving that it is indeed another social media fad. Sure, the game was downloaded 50 million times in 50 days, making it officially the fastest-growing mobile game ever. 

As of May 2012, the game has changed. AppData reports that there are four million fewer daily active users than there were last month. 

"In a hits-driven business like gaming, stamina is as important an asset as creativity," writes ReadWriteWeb's own Dan Frommer, shortly after the acquisition went through.

Instead, Draw Something went big and is now going home. Its life feels more like a sprint and less of a marathon - but at least the higher-ups at OMGPOP cashed in. So much for stamina.

So Wait, Why is Draw Something Losing Users?

Running metaphors aside, Draw Something is bombing out for a number of reasons.

• Everyone needs to play at the same time: The game itself doesn't work unless your friends are all around at the same time. It is not something you wait for - it's a game that you must stay on, slowing becoming addicted. Then you burn out. If no one is around to play, you must start looking for new people - or start bugging (nudging) the current players. That instills a sense of lameness in most every user.

• Cheating is too easy: If you really care about collecting coins, you can easily just draw the word of what you're actually supposed to be drawing, and allow the other person to guess it. If not everyone is honest, the entire "rewards" aspect of this game - the coins - becomes just another way to loot the system.

• Paying for Coins? Really? Sure, there's a free version of the Draw Something app itself - but actually buying coins and investing in it makes little sense if your friends aren't around. It's like buying livestock in FarmVille and then abandoning the farm, ya know?

• This isn't Scrabble: In Zynga's successful title Words With Friends, cheating is much harder. That is, unless you're simultaneously texting other players to let them know which letters you have. That's like the equivalent of peering over at someone's Scrabble deck while sitting next to them. Are you really going to do that?

• Drawing is fun to do alone together: Picture sitting around at a table with your friends in elementary school. Here's what I remember doing: I would spend a few minutes intently drawing something, and then I'd stop to peer over at what my friends were doing. It never felt like cheating. But then again, I wasn't on my iPhone, trying to connect with someone I couldn't actually see.

ReadWriteWeb: What was your initial reaction to Facebook's acquisition of Instagram?

Philippe Gonzalez: I was surprised about it and had to tweet right away, even though I was, at the time, lying on a beach in Thailand with no Internet connection. I had to find an Internet connection and inform people about it as soon as possible. Then I came back to my hotel and found myself wondering about what might happen with the whole Instagram world, my friends, their habits, and my own project, Instagramers. Really, I was more aware of all these people I met and I could lose contact with because they might reject Facebook and migrate to other photo-sharing apps. But then I thought that would be a pretty heavy reaction to something that wouldn't have effects, at least for a while. I wrote a post to share some of my thoughts on the matter. I said that the acquisition would not complicate Instagram, and even so it probably wouldn't change for a while. I wrote that it's better to wait and see instead of immediately deleting pics and organizing a full-on "social war." That approach doesn't really make sense to me.

The Fate of Instagramers In a Post-Facebook Era

ReadWriteWeb: Can Instagramers.com even exist in the post-Facebook acquisition era? 

Philippe Gonzalez: Of course. The future of Instagramers.com is like the Internet industry, meaning it's a total mystery. That's why I like my job in the Internet and the app world. You never know what will happen. Where will you find an opportunity? And where will your next competitor pop up? Since I started with this project, I say to people that I don't know where this project will drive me, but I'm really having a great moment, I'm living a great experience, and at the end of the day, the most important is the experiences you live and share with other people in your life.

ReadWriteWeb: How did Instagramers react to the acquisition?

Philippe Gonzalez: About 99% of users felt scared. Most of them felt this way because of they were ignorant of Facebook's future plans and thought a full integration would kill the authentic world of Instagram. At the time, I tried to convince people that this acquisition was good for the future of the app, especially because money was necessary to help it survive. These young guys who owned Instagram couldn't provide users much fun without actual investors. Still, most people think something bad will happen sooner or later. The acquisition was pretty bad timing. The announcement was made at the same time that tons of new users were opening accounts on their Android devices. Plus, the quality of the pics (and "popular page") was declining. Lots of people wrote and asked me what would happen with the copyrights. Others asked me how to delete their accounts. A large amount of them asked what would be the future of the Instagramers local fans group network. Some friends of mine even suggested that I open an account in other apps like StreamZoo or EyeEm. I actually did do that, but still I am confident that Instagram will be the most important photo sharing network and that, after some waves, things will calm down.

Where Instagram Photography or Art is Headed in the Post-Facebook Acquisition Era

ReadWriteWeb: Will Instagram art exhibitions start to die off now that Instagram is a part of Facebook?

Philippe Gonzalez: No. I don't think the acquisition of Instagram by Facebook is the main problem in creating a distance between art and Instagram. The main problem could simply be the "popular page" algorithm. Many people wrote me to say that they were very demotivated because they didn't hit the popular page anymore, and that the quality of the pictures was low - mostly cakes, cats and sexy "teen" girls. That could provoke users who were actually interested in Instagram as a platform to exhibit their art works to move to another platform with less users but a better understanding of the artists' motivations and needs.

ReadWriteWeb: Will there still be a way to use Instagram images on Facebook in an indie way? Or is this the complete mainstreamification of Instagram?

Philippe Gonzalez: I think Instagram will really remain independent. What could happen very fast is that Facebook could integrate Instagram pics to support their Facebook Places feature. This could add some interesting geolocation pics. As an Instagram user, you can share your pictures already through Facebook. And then there are the API-based browser sites like Statigram or Webstagram. Most of the time, when you upload photo galleries to Facebook, you share a special event without looking to the artistic side. On Instagram, you share the emotional moments in the same gallery and you always dedicate some time to filtering, editing the picture and looking for the best results.

ReadWriteWeb: What's next for the mobile photo-sharing world after Instagram becomes a part of Facebook?

Philippe Gonzalez: I think that whatever happens with Instagram, the "photo-sharing trend" will remain mobile. Smartphones will increase their lenses, processing and storage capacities, but also their social-network sharing availability. The rest is quite difficult to anticipate. There are loads of competitors that are copying Instagram's concept right now and will probably catch some million peoples' attention, but I think Instagram will be the reference point. I still believe Instagram has a strategic purpose and won't be integrated into Facebook - at least, not for a while.

Lead Instagram image via MyLinn.

Last time we checked, Pinterest was a site mostly full of women pinning away images of wedding planning and home decor. The site is in fact about 80% women, according to data from Google Ad Planner. But there are still a few dudes on the site. User Mike Dew, aka tempspaz, is the most-followed guy on Pinterest. ReadWriteWeb tracked him down via some search sleuthing and asked him a few questions about what it's like being the most-followed guy on the Internet's new social-network darling. Mike joined the site in October 2010, meaning that he didn't even read A Guy's Guide to Pinterest before becoming a pinner.

Mike Dew is a Philadelphia-based, Cincinnati-born graphic designer. On Pinterest, he just goes by Mike D. His profile pic shows his faded red Cincinnati Reds cap, eyes, eyebrows and nose. Mike currently has 16 boards, ranging from design to sustenance to threads. He is only following 62 people. A total of 1,331,092 people currently follow him. 

Strangely, Mike says he found out about his immense amount of followers accidentally. When we chatted on the phone, he didn't come off as a kind of Twitter social-media marketing guru type. Rather, he's just a pretty cool guy with an awesome eye for design. He is a tastemaker, and his platform is Pinterest. 

"Over the winter, things just kind of took off," he tells ReadWriteWeb. "Someone I work with DM'ed me the Mashable article of top 15 Pinterest users. I saw it and thought 'That's pretty crazy!' "

Pinterest and the Social Media Celebrity

Celebrities are made on social media. Or, rather, social-media celebrities are made on social media.

"It's just a website, so it's not like I'm a celebrity," Dew says. "It's hard to know how great of a reach I actually do have. I've been doing the same thing on Pinterest for the last year and a half or so, and there's just a different number on my Pinterest page."

He also doesn't really have any idea how all this happened. 

"I started noticing that I was getting a lot of followers over Christmas time," he says. "I had about 300 or so in October 2011. Then I went home to Cincinnati over the holidays, and when I came back I had 150,000 followers. I asked my friends if the same thing had happened to them, and they said no, it hadn't, and they didn't know what this was about."

By late March, when the Mashable top pinner dudes article came out, Dew says he had accumulated about 600,000 followers.

"And from there it was just like boom, boom - 500,000, then 750,000, and then I hit 1 million."

But what does it all mean? Dew tells us that he didn't bother to contact Pinterest to figure out how this happened or even why. In the meantime, he says that his Pinterest popularity has helped him gain some freelance design work, but nothing that he would describe as "weird" or "over-the-top." He has also pinned a few things for friends, to help them get additional exposure.

Dew is not new to using the Internet for cataloging imagery that he finds inspiring or interesting.

"Over the years, I have had all these different blogs and inspiration sites that I would go to," he says. "Stuff would pop up, and there was never a good way to catalog stuff that I wanted to save. When Pinterest came around, that was perfect."

Even though his focus is design, he does say that having a lot of interior design and travel imagery has helped him take off. 

"A nice picture of Japan gets around," he says. "Or, that's a nice picture of a kitchen - and I really do like to cook. So that might have a little bit to do with why I have a lot of people following me. Everyone likes beautiful pictures of food."

Dew is a considerate pinner, only pinning images once or twice a day. He is polite and not interested in filling his followers' streams with too much stuff.

"Some people I follow fill up my news feed and it gets irritating," he says. "I don't want to overload people with too much stuff."

Pinterest or Facebook? Why Not Both?

For visually oriented folks, such as artists, designers, chefs and those with good taste, Pinterest is a haven of images. It complements the already visual nature of Facebook - yet, on Pinterest, it's hard to have a full-fledged conversation about images. Plus, Facebook is still a very personal space; at least, it is for Dew.

"Keeping Facebook private for me is still important," says Dew. "People find me from Pinterest, but I don't accept those friend requests. If I don't know you and you don't know me, why be friends on Facebook?"

Will Pinterest eclipse Facebook? Or are Facebook and Pinterest fraternal twins of some sort?

"As long as there are people like me, Pinterest will have an audience or a user base," Dew says. "It might not eclipse Facebook, but it will be a Web standard like Google and Facebook. I think Pinterest could be on that level."

Instagramers.com

ReadWriteWeb: Did you see the Facebook-Instagram acquisition coming? Were you at all concerned about or thinking about the possibility of Instagram being acquired by Facebook when you launched Instagramers.com?

Philippe Gonzalez: When I launched the blog, Instagramers.com, I didn't really mind what would happen with Instagram in the future. I was just motivated by helping people with the Internet, apps and social networks - I wanted to help them get the most out of Instagram. My blog was not focused on a business model at all, and I knew that my project could lead nowhere, depending on the success of the app.

About the purchase itself: We had some info these last months that Google and Facebook were highly interested in the fast development of Instagram, and of course were interested in developing something in this area. There were rumors that Facebook was trying to develop its own photosharing app last winter, but nothing really happened.

We were digesting the Android version and the effect it could have. Everyday it was a constant flow of "1 million new users" into Instagram, and that was the main information we were receiving. I thought that Instagram would stay independent for a long time. First, because the number of users was increasing and the team needed money to run servers and maintenance, and secondly, because strategically Instagram needed to be a "plus" to another service. My first thought last year when I launched Instagramers.com was that it would be a perfect complement to Twitter. Most of all. People like Jack Dorsey of Twitter was one of the first people to invest in Instagram in early 2011, and Kevin Systros worked there for awhile. 

ReadWriteWeb: How do you think the type of imagery on Instagram will change in the post-Facebook acquisition era, once Instagram is fully a part of Facebook?

Philippe Gonzalez: I think Zuckerberg is conscious that a full integration of Instagram with Facebook would be a great mistake. It would be like throwing a billion dollars to the rubbish bin.

I think it's really a strategic purchase to provide Instagram users [the means to] share their photos with ever more agility... in the medium term. And we all hope Facebook is conscious of it.

During all these last months, Igers (that's to say, Instagram users) were very reluctant to be considered like members of a "controlled"  social network and had the intention to live in a dream, in a social network "free of business and economic interests," and they even rejected Facebook. Most of our friends were spending less and less time in their Facebook profiles, prefering the stickiness, new experiences and emotions created by Instagram's small squared pics addiction.

On many occasions, i suggested on my @Igers account (Instagramers stream in Instagram) that Facebook could be preparing an "Instagram version" and  dozens, hundreds of negative comments rejected the idea, showing their detachment of the Facebook platform. Curiously, I'm sure most of the people have their own Facebook profile and use it daily but [they have] a "bad image" of Facebook privacy terms and wanted to stay independent and away from the eye of the "Big Brother," or how they consider Facebook to be today.

That's why I think Facebook will not integrate Instagram in the short/medium term and shouldn't provoke any change in "Imagery" or Instagram streams. In my opinion, the launching of the Android version has probably much more impact at the moment in the quality and use by the "early adopters and evangelists," and the future of the app than the purchase by Facebook. Tons of "teens" have arrived to Instagram, changing "the genuine mood" and ecosystem of the app, driving some people to migrate to other apps. It was something "iPhoners" like me could anticipate before they launched it, actually - just because a different OS meant [targeting different] users and behaviors, which would have an impact sooner or later on the app itself.

This is the first of two posts. Look for the next one soon. In the meantime, here are a few additional thoughts from Gonzalez on the Instagramers.com blog.

This news does not come as a complete surprise. Earlier this year, Mr. Maloney had discussed the idea of moving on, as he is less interested in running a business and more focused on the early phases of building a startup. Tumblr recently upped its size to 100 employees, and brought on additional department executives. 

Tumblr received an $800 million valuation last fall shortly after it raised $85 million in venture capital. Not one of the 54 million blogs that exist on Tumblr, however, is currently profitable.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Tumblr is still growing. It had 56 million visitors in March. While it has been experimenting with ways to generate money that isn't advertising, apparently those solutions were not working very well.

The new advertising campaign goes against Tumblr CEO David Karp's previous position - he used to be completely opposed to putting ads on the Tumblr users' blogs.

As of today, Tumblr is now open to advertisers. Radar, the little box on the right of the dashboard, and Spotlight are both available for advertisers. Sponsorship packages start at $25,000. Advertisers who opt to use Tumblr Spotlight will be featured "front-and-center," according to Tumblr's new page for marketers.

Maloney will not be part of this new transition. "I am a good operator," he told The Wall Street Journal. "Am I one of those big network operators? That is not particularly interesting to me nor does it play to my strengths." 

Socializing is Big on Socialcam

The Socialcam video itself resembles a clean, clear Vimeo video. There is no time limit on the videos shot with this app. And with each video, the user can decide if they want to make it public to the Socialcam community (and anyone else who picks up the link), viewable for the user's followers only or completely private. In terms of sharing functionality, Socialcam allows users to share the video on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, email, SMS, Posterous, Tumblr or Dropbox. 

One thing to watch out for - which is true of most apps these days - is the Facebook social sharing feature. Sharing to Facebook is a pretty common move, especially since this app integrates with Facebook directly. On Timeline, the app's video cover image appears on my Timeline along with a link to watch the video on Socialcam.com. You can tag friends in the video itself, but not on Facebook directly. This quietly keeps users connected to Socialcam itself.  Sharing the same link out to Twitter is much simpler, and the result is to lead users back to the video on Socialcam. It's possible to use Socialcam on the Web, but it feels most useful on mobile - after all, these are not videos that you should think much about or edit. 

The SocialCam popular section presents everything from a boy playing a violin to a 10-second video titled "Toilet Technology" and a man named Mistah F.A.B.'s one-minute, 12-second video called "Daily motivation #6," which is him delivering words of wisdom to his followers and other users of the app. Facebook users are sharing Socialcam videos to the site; today's Facebook news feed video du jour is called "Giant Snake Eats Security Guard." It is a YouTube video that the user uploaded to Socialcam. 

Users can browse videos and leave comments or big red heart "likes" or "loves," depending on how you interpret the meaning of a red cartoon heart. If you're not careful, watching that toilet video on the app will "post on your behalf, including videos you watched, videos you shared and more" to Facebook - just like a Facebook Social Reader. Now everyone knows I've watched the terrible toilet video. Oh well, I'll suck it up - and then make sure to change the settings. 

Viddy: The Clean-Cut Video Sharing App

Viddy feels like the more conservative version of Socialcam - and we do not mean that in the political sense of the word. Based in Venice Beach (Socialcam is in San Francisco, to be sure), Viddy lets users capture, edit and share 15-second videos. Mark Zuckerberg has already joined and taken a little video of his pup, Baby Beast.

Shooting your first Viddy is a different experience than your first video on Socialcam or Klip. It is your first "viddy," not your first video. One thing that qualifies it as a "viddy" is the 15-second limit - users are forced to craft what they are going to say exactly into that short snippet of time. Choose your subject wisely, like Zuck did. You've only got 15 seconds to say something, and the message is the medium. 

The Viddy user interface on the Web version of this app feels cold and design-like in its simplicity. Users can click about, exploring the popular, trending and newest videos on the app. The mobile version presents a single flowing stream of endless videos. Sharing sends videos out to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, SMS or email. Want to know what's trending? Hint: There is a cat involved, and there are also some stairs. This morning, I was cruising through my Facebook news feed and discovered a 15-second video from Snoop Dogg titled "NYC." He uses the vintage filter, adding an ever-so-slight hip tinge to this otherwise banal video of him talking. The rap star has already accumulated nearly 140,000 followers.

Klip It, And Share It With Only a Few

If Socialcam and Viddy are in a race for the top, Klip is the quiet kid who's hanging back and observing, waiting for his moment to pounce. This app isn't clean like Viddy or busy like Socialcam; it's just practical. Trends are simple, including popular, latest, week all-time. Videos are staggered on the screen like Facebook Timeline. The Search function is simple, and allows users to look for klips, people or just topics. There is no time limit for the videos that users shoot. Klip also offers a few filters, like Zenith, Voodoo, Toon, HDR, Gotham, Fisheye and Cinema, or users can go with nothing at all. 

Klip hosts a variety of performance videos, including some of singers, musicians and artistic videos. Some videos are as long as three minutes, and many have testimonials and comments from fellow users. These adorable videos capture a little girl who dreams of becoming a "fashionista." They are public, and have received quite a few comments. Some are absolutely positive, while others are rude, racially insensitive remarks. 

"At the core, if you remove everything else, we were usually the day to day - how you live your life in the app is the most important," Klip founder Alain Rossmann says. "We are the only guys that allow you to see a preview of every video. And we have a lot of intellectual property around that."

Klip has been called "Twitter for videos," which implies a sort of quietness that the more YouTube-esque Socialcam and Facebook-ified Viddy do not.  

"We are taking the high road, the high-class road," Rossman says. "We want to be much more sustainable over time. You can easily become ChatRoulette of video apps."

The Future of Social Video Apps

Like Instagram images, all of these videos apps capture on-the-fly snapshots of the world as seen through your eyes. With Facebook's acquisition of Instagram, Instagrams will start to supplant Facebook photos, imbuing them with an odd sense of permanence that was not there before. They are the stuff of future memories, like the Polaroids of years past. 

Why? Because in the future, everything will be seen through rose-colored filters; or, rather, vintage-tinted, electronica-inducing filters overlaid with club music. The imagery of our generation will not be defined with a single filter - it will overlay multiple sounds and images, an overstimulating mishmash of audio and visual.

In New York City, Brian Difeo, head of the Instagram NYC community, recently put on an exhibition of Instagram images. His aim with the show was to elevate the Instagram image to new heights. Instagram users become "Insta-artists" who are documenting their daily lives in New York City using the tiny mobile photo-sharing app. But it's not really possible for Instagram to truly escape its associations with twee hipsterdom. Perhaps it's the comments and little heart "likes" that make the disassociation truly impossible.

Difeo explains that there are 41 images in the show all culled from six of Instagram's most popular NYC photographers, including @bridif, @astrodub, @johndeguzman, @newyorkcity, @uptowneastnyc and @cxcart. DiFeo includes himself as one of the six people in the exhibition. A total of twelve images were submitted through the W Times Square's social media contest. Instagrammers were asked to tag their photos with #wdesign for a chance to win a spot in the exhibition. Users also had to follow the Instagram page. 

"We received more than 6,000 entries ranging from interesting viewpoints of the city's skyline to urban street art found on buildings and murals throughout the boroughs," said Jim McPartlin, the GM of W Hotels who spearheaded the project alongside DiFeo. 

In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at almost the same time, another Instagram exhibition was going on. Joshua Miller, the executive director of C&I Studios, decided to put together an Instagram art show. Using the hashtag #CIPhotoADay, he ran a photo-a-day contest for 25 days. Every day people submitted photos based on the theme.

"When has your brother or your sister ever been able to show their stuff at an art gallery?" says Miller. "I love using Instagram and so does my staff, and there are tons of people who aren't professional photographers but can do amazing stuff with Instagram."

In total, the space received about 1,600 images. Many of the people who submitted them came by the studio on opening night to see them in the flesh. Miller and his team downloaded the Instagram images from the Internet and printed them out, and hung them on the wall. In the gallery, they handed out little red hearts, and people were able to just stick them onto actual images that they "liked" or "loved." 

Some of the categories included "international," "sky," "eyes" and "nature." The images were arranged around the gallery in clusters. 

Instagram Redefines the Term "Amateur Photography"

Amateur photography was once a hobby that people had to invest more in than just a phone. Of course, the iPhone or Android is more than just a phone - it's a mini computer in your pocket. By investing in the smartphone, you're secretly also investing in photography - and in that sense, everyone is a photographer. 

"I think Instagram makes photography more accessible than ever because mobile phones today have really good cameras and editing apps," says the NYC Instagram show curator Brian DiFeo. "And since it is tied to social media, an amateur photographer can share a news-worthy image that may get noticed by media outlets." 

With Facebook's acquisition of Instagram, it seems like the types of images will change - but DiFeo believes otherwise.

"I don't think the Facebook acquisition will change Instagram all that much, unless they adopt Facebook's TOU, which will definitely impact some people's photography," DiFeo says. "The user base will probably continue to grow, but I don't think it will change too much."

This show follows on the heels of last year's London exhibition, MyWorldShared, which exhibited images that the show directors said "record our world around us, our lives, our outlook, our views and share that view with the rest of the world. It is an individual view, but one that others can relate to - like postcards from a friend."

DiFeo expects the Instagram art show trend to continue growing.

"This is the first exhibit of its kind in NYC and it's been 18 months since the app came out," he says. "I think there are a lot of themes on Instagram, like street photography, that would look great in a gallery collection." 

 Lead image via @johndeguzman.

After one conversation with Socialcam CEO Michael Seibel, it seems like the future of social video isn't in selling your company to Facebook - it's in the niche communities that populate this tiny app. They are the true owners of this bustling social video community. 

Spun off from Justin.tv and launched little more than a year ago, Socialcam is a social video app that gives users a ridiculously easy way to shoot a video, upload it to the app's niche-focused community and then share it to other social sites if they'd like. As of today, Socialcam has surpassed Viddy as the #1 photo and video app in the Apple App Store. Instagram has since been bumped to #3.

It also grabbed additional funding from some "A-Listers" like Yuri Milner of Startfund and Tim Draper of Draper and Associates, making for a total of nearly 40-some-odd investors. Like the app itself, it's nice to look at. But that's not where Siebel's head was today, when we talked.

Socialcam CEO Michael Seibel sees the potential mainstreamification of social videos as a way not only to share one's life story, but also to create community around the moving image. Interestingly, however, Siebel ended up as the CEO of Socialcam not through his love of telling stories or the image. Rather, he saw it as an opportunity that he just couldn't pass up. He studied political science at Yale University and thought he would end up in DC. That's not quite what happened, however.

From Politics in DC to the All-Video World of Justin.tv

In 2007, Seibel cofounded Justin.tv with his friend Justin Kan, Emmett Shear and Kyle Vogt. Justin.tv allowed anyone to broadcast video online through "channels." The original channel just included Justin broadcasting his life 24/7. But Seibel did not start out with a particular passion or interest in the tech world, or the video world. 

"I think basically it was a level of stubbornness," says Seibel. "I got into startups because of Justin. I wanted to do politics with my life but was convinced that I needed to do it in a very particular way, which included working on a campaign when I was young, having a family, a mortgage and other such basic experiences."

After working for a year in DC as the finance director for Kweisi Mfume's U.S. Senate campaign, eventually moving up to the position of Finance Director, Justin approached Seibel.

"Justin gave me the opportunity to work and be a cofounder of Justin.tv, and even though I thought it was crazy, I also thought to myself 'when would I have another opportunity to start a business with my best friend?'" 

Seibel grew up in Brooklyn, and describes himself as a guy who's always been comfortable around computers. 

"My dad was a programmer," he says. "And I was excited about that world, but it seemed so far away."

After he joined teams with Justin Kan, he left his East Coast digs for San Francisco, and jumped right into the video world.

"It was a rough road, I gotta tell you," he says. "Everyone was a Deputy Downer for video companies, and we were a video company. We had to work really hard to survive. But during the process, I really started to fall in love with video."

For Seibel, half the passion came from what he describes as a chip on his shoulder, a response to the people who said he wasn't going to make video work. The other half of it came from a desire to get more people to use video to share their life and experiences.

Why Live Video Didn't Make Sense, But an All-Video App Did

Seibel recounts a story about getting interviewed by reporters in massive vans.

"It was hilarious because we were filming them live using our 25-pound video equipment, and they were standing up on their vans trying to film us live," he recounts, jokingly.  

Much like its image-oriented cousin Instagram, Socialcam gives users the opportunity to add a variety of filters to the video itself. A short, "au natural" video can suddenly become newsy, "classic," "casual," or like an MTV music video. Music accompanies these videos too, if the user so wishes to add it - get some "street" music into the video, or perhaps some "happy"-sounding tunes or just plain tropical breezy. Socialcam gives users the opportunity to transform their otherwise possibly boring moments into mini productions, starring their friends and family, or maybe just a plain old fire hydrant.

When Socialcam launched in April 2011, it was immediately available on both iPhone and Android. There was no iPhone-exclusivity like Instagram. And there was also more than a focus on the filters themselves.

"Socialcam users are using more than just filters - it's the filters, themes and soundtracks all together," says Siebel. "Why? I think it goes back to the core vision of the company. We want to make video creation mainstream."

To take video into the space that photography currently occupies, however, is not an easy task. 

"How many people do you know who have taken a photo class? A videography class?" asks Seibel. "Photography is a much more widely distributed skill, and it's something that everyday people feel more comfortable with. We want to take video outside of the black box, breaking down that barrier between the professional and the everyday person, and we want to provide people with simple tools to do that."

And according to Seibel, this will happen with the rise of the smartphone - because anyone with a smartphone has a video camera.

"Instagram didn't have to popularize photo-taking," Seibel says. "They were able to take the fact that people loved photos, and help them take even more photos. So for us, we're kind of doing double duty - we want to make you feel comfortable taking a video and being in a video, while also making sure it's fun and easy, and something you can be proud of."

Socialcam does not put a limit on the length of a video. According to Seibel, this would actually hinder the amount of videos published. The shorter you make the video, the longer a user has to think about how to say what they want in a specific period of time. If the video is good and the sound quality is high, chances are people will stick around and watch it.

Communication Gone Visual: The Moving Image Is Moving Forward

Socialcam is host to a huge variety of videos, from aspiring rap stars to sweet violin-playing musicians who mix their music with the tunes offered. And there's always a bit of toilet humor and inspirational talks to go alongside those more creative endeavors. 

"We have a hugely diverse userbase," says Seibel. "Socialcam is a global network. We've got this amazing community of deaf kids in France who use Socialcam. They use it like a phone call - they use video to communicate with one another. I love to see that this stuff can just happen." 

Aside from the popular trending types of videos and the niche communities on Socialcam, there are four categories that Seibel sees growing the fastest. The first one is family. 

"Young parents take videos of their kids, and then send them to the grandparents who consume them," he says. "One of the most basic use cases is videos of my kids."

The second most popular use case is community - people use Socialcam to interact with each other within the community. The third is "what we like to call informally 'Jackass,' or stuff my friends are doing that's stupid or funny," Seibel says. "Before you would tell a story, and now you just take a video of your friend doing that." 

The last biggest use case is a category that Seibel refers to as "traditional." It includes the type of Timeline-esque life events that you would expect, including graduation, Christmas and other holidays, birthdays, special events, vacations and weekend trips. 

"I think that in the next two years, we're going to take a huge bite out of the number of people who take videos once a week," Seibel says. "When you're going back through the content you've taken, there will be a lot more videos, and it will be easier to browse and remember." 

Tools by Disconnect literally "disconnect" you from Facebook, Google and Twitter so that these major sites don't keep track of your browsing. A new tool called Collusion for Chrome shows users all the websites that secretly track you as you browse the Web. How do these tools work, and what are the advantages to using them? There is a hope that one day, our Web life will be private again.

"If consumers express increased concern about this kind of tracking," says ESET security evangelist Stephen Cobb, "then we might see the people who do it moderate that behavior. One view of this is that the market will determine whether people keep getting tracked."

Something like this has probably happened to you: You read about back surgery on some website, and then every page you go to has an ad for a back surgery clinic in Florida. This is an example of cross-site tracking technology.

It is exactly this type of behavior that Disconnect's tools try to combat, or at least slow down by inspecting the outgoing requests from the browser. These behave differently from Firefox's Do Not Track and Google's Incognito browsing.

"Even if something like Do-Not-Track gets wide industry adoption, there's a small chance that those 7,000 third parties that we discussed in our presentation at DefCon will actually respect the Do-Not-Track header," says Brian Kennish, founder of Disconnect.

Google Incognito browsing is not as hidden as it seems. While it's a useful way to clear out cookies every session, what it really does is wipe out all cookies from a specific browsing session after you shut it down. It is best for browsing on a public machine.

How Disconnect Works

"The extensions inspect the outgoing requests from the browser, and they all have at least a blacklist, and they generally have a whitelist as well," says Disconnect Founder Brian Kennish. "For any given request, they'll check the request against their blacklist and see if it's going to that domain, and if so it will stop the requests."

Some extensions operate only on cookies, which means they will prevent cookies from people who are on the blacklist. That is not how Disconnect tools operate.

"Our extensions operate at the request level, because cookies are only one way in which ads, analytics and ad companies can do the tracking," Kennish says. "Cookies are only one way users can be uniquely identified. There are other ways, like IP address, LSOs (flash cookies) and browser fingerprinting, to name a few."

Disconnect offers tools that stop Facebook, Google and Twitter from tracking your browsing activities.

"Organizations that are getting a significant chunk of users' browsing history, like Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter, can get upwards of 5% of a users' browsing history, which becomes a significant number. If you open up history in your browser and select 30% of sites and email them to Google, that's what it's like," Kennish says.

Yet block out too many sites, and you walk a fine line between protection and convenience - blocking too much just makes the browsing experience feel completely inconvenient.

Collusion for Google Chrome Shows How Websites Track You

Six weeks ago, Mozilla launched a Collusion extension that tracks which websites are tracking you. Disconnect just did the same thing for Chrome, making it possible to see how widely sites you visit are disseminating your data. It gives you a peek into the secret world of invisible tracking on the Web.

"We're just scratching the surface of what can be done visualization-wise," Kennish says. "Our two priorities are to educate and help users understand what is happening with their data, and to empower users to understand how their data is used or not."

The second step is the main focus of Collusion, which scans sites that set cookies and additional signals.

"What consumers have not fully realized yet is that much of their activity is in a database, somewhere," Cobb says. "And the extent to which companies are trying to connect those databases so they have a broader look at your behavior."

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

With Facebook's recent acquisition of Instagram, however, those once fleeting, filtered images will soon have a new repository: Facebook. Why would a photographer who is using Instagram in the post-acquisition era drag and drop that same image into Flickr? This will be one of Flickr's main pain points - not to mention the impossibly slow upload speed of its mobile app. But if users care about preserving their images, Flickr might stand a chance.

Instead of lashing out or trying to fight back against the ever-expanding world of mobile photo-sharing apps, Flickr has decided to jump on board. It has happily donned Instagram's rose-colored glasses or, rather, filters.

"The announcement that Facebook has acquired Instagram underscores the incredible growth and influence of the mobile photo-sharing ecosystem," says Flickr's Kay Kremerskothen. "This growth is highly beneficial to Flickr, with mobile apps such as Instagram, Hipstamatic and more making up a large percentage of the images uploaded to Flickr every day."

Sharing an Instagram image to Flickr changes it from a spur-of-the-moment snapshot into something that feels more formal and permanent. On Instagram, an image is a one-size-fits-all look at users' fleeting moments. On Flickr, though, it is now living in a space that's particular to documentation, clearer copyrights (everything on Instagram is public) and the possibility for multiple sizes. Flickr acts more as a repository for a wider range of images. 

Will Instagrams Move from Facebook to Flickr?

If for some reason Instagrammers want a more permanent, searchable home for their images after Facebook's acquisition, they will take the time to download those images from Facebook and up onto Flickr. This is because right now on Facebook, it's difficult and clunky to locate past images.

Facebook organizes photos by album - to find a photo, one must click through the albums or scroll through the entire "photos and videos of you" section, which is organized by year. It's nifty if you're thinking about time chronologically - but how many users are? While the photo section gives you a nice overview of your "Facebook life," it's not exactly an easily searchable, metadata-rich space. This is where Flickr, especially the new HTML5 photo uploader, could come in handy.

Yet do Instagram users really want to create a searchable database of their images? If they do, and they are willing to use Flickr for these purposes, Flickr could become a repository for images that Instagram and iPhoneography users want to make more permanent and searchable. That is, if they actually care to document their memories.

If these users prefer to live in the moment, well, let the ultrasounds and kid photos on Facebook keep coming.

Soon they will be cloaked in Earlybird, Sierra, Lo-fi and 1977 Instagram filters. 

Images via Flickr.

Instagram is a community conducive to likes and comments, whereas Flickr focuses more on displaying collections of photographs in photostreams, sets and galleries, organized by tags and maps. Yet interestingly, the most-used camera on Flickr is the iPhone4. What's fundamentally different about the two sites? The privacy settings.

"I've been using Flickr for six years now and have post almost 6,000 photos in that time and have almost 600,000 views," says Boston-based photographer Greg Peverill-Conti. "The main thing I use Flickr for is a project called 1000faces that's almost at 3,000 photos now. It's been great for storage, for having people find photographs and connecting with other photographers."

For Peverill-Conti, Flickr operates more as a storage space and ongoing project. He also shoots photos that he uploads to Flickr with a Canon T2i in RAW format, which in English is the highest resolution possible. He then uploads them with Flickr Uploadr or Lightroom. Instagram is more of an afterthought, for spur-of-the-moment stuff that he sees when he's out and about.

"Last night, for example, I was walking out of a movie theater and a guy was on a scissor truck changing the marquee," he says. "That I shot with my iPhone."

Photographer Chris Azar tells ReadWriteWeb that he sees Flickr as "a good space for my DSLR photos, and Instagram for grab shots and realtime stuff."

"I send Insta stuff to Flickr, too," he adds. "Instagram is almost exclusively mobile versus Flickr, which is exclusively desktop (& more studio work & creative commons)."

The two do not often share the same space. And why would they?

Public vs. Private Imagery: Instagram vs. Flickr

Instagram features the Andy Warhol-esque polaroids of our day. One perfect description of Instagram lives on Instagrammers.com's About page: 

"Instagram unearths your creative side and gets it flowing. It allows you to make artistic pictures even if you always thought you were the least creative person on earth, and last but not least, it makes you part of an international and multicultural community that is really into sharing."

And on Instagram, everything is public. Audiences appear and disappear almost as quickly as images on the stream.

That is not the case on Flickr, where users have granular settings for changing photos to public, visible to friends, visible to family or completely private. Communities are more deliberate. Following is not an option, but joining is.

Flickr provides a list of the most popular tags on the site. Not surprisingly, a few of the biggest categories include canon, instagramapp, iphoneography, nikon and wedding. The iPhone4 is the most popular camera of the Flickr community, just ahead of the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and the Canon EOS REBEL T2i.

The very fact that community members of Flickr have the option to upload from a point-and-shoot camera, however, changes the popular imagery that one is likely to see on Flickr.

The iPhone4 may be the most popular camera of Flickr users, but the four other cameras are not smartphones.

What Instagram lacks, Flickr fulfills: A possibility for adjusting privacy settings so that every photo uploaded doesn't appear out there, for the entire Web to see. On Flickr, there is no such thing as social media celebrity.

The public nature of Instagram makes the idea of celebrity not only normal, but encouraged.

Images via GregPC's Flickr, Chris Azar's Flickr, Followgram and Instagram.

There is some good news in this: the images do upload faster than before, file sizes are bigger, and it's easier to tell the story behind the photo itself. It's also quite nice to just drop photos into the browser, thanks to the HTML5 features. Flickr also has an open API, so there's additional integration into newer OSX and operating systems. 

"Flickr holds about seven billion photos, and uploading is one of the most, if not the most, important aspect of the site," says a Flickr spokesperson. "We believe that the photo is about a lot more than the image - it's about the title, tag an description, and helps build the community that we have."

Yet take a look at the most popular tags on Flickr and you'll notice that iphoneography and instagramapp are two of the leaders. In this sense, it seems like Flickr is becoming more of a repository for photos from mobile services - rather than a standalone platform. 

Nevertheless, the Flickr mobile app does have a clean, visually enticing photostream homepage for every user. 

And what's more, Flickr actually respects privacy - for every photo uploaded, Flickr asks if you would like this to be a private image (only you), something to share with friends and/or family, or anyone (public). If Facebook and Instagram took a few tips from this aspect of Flickr, perhaps they could engender more trust amongst users. 

So while the HTML5 Uploader isn't going to be Flickr's comeback, the fact that it allows you to move something from public to private again gives Flickr one advantage at least over Facebook and Instagram.

Much like Twitter or Tumblr, users on Findings.com can discover others who are reading similar books, and go right ahead and follow them. 

As with any site that focuses on blurbs, however, there is a fear that the experience of reading is becoming less about actual comprehension and more about finding super-sharable text. Findings.com takes that problem into account.

"The vision of what we want to create with Findings.com is social reading, and we feel that it's just at the beginning of its existence," Borthwick says. "The experience of reading is changing, and the book as an object is fragmented into its component parts. It is shared and then reorganized with a  different context - some of that is just about people surfing in and seeing a clip from a book, or wanting to identify themselves with it."

The identity piece is not a very meaningful interaction - but it could lead to a sort of following of the author. Of wanting to take a walk down the pathway of the author's mindscape. 

"This very lightweight aspect of taking a quote and resharing it is only a piece of the puzzle," Borthwick says. "If that's all that social reading is about, then the social creation of books is the social reading of books."

Borthwick perused the site as we chatted, and found that nearly 70% of the marginalia - the bits of text clipped next to the book - came from e-books, and 30% came from articles around the Web.

The clips that come from an iPad are just seen as Web clips; any clips from Amazon Kindle clearly state "from Amazon Kindle." This is interesting, especially when one considers the fact that marginalia - those fascinating blurbs that seem to sum up an idea or concept in one fell swoop - can come from a longform essay, an e-book or anywhere around the Web. 

"We want people to explain why the marginalia they find is interesting," says John Borthwick, co-founder of BetaWorks, which owns Findings.com. "We want more curation around so that people can really make it something that's more personal."

Lead image via Shutterstock.com.

"Sorry, tickets are sold out," the site says. It explains that Apple will post videos of the sessions shortly after the conference, making it available to the Internet public at large. While the event always sells out, this is the fastest conference sellout in Apple's history.

Last year, the WWDC sold out in 10 hours, which was a record at the time. In 2010, the event sold out in eight days. Last year's WWDC unveiled iOS 5 and highlighted features from OS X 10.7 Lion. This year, insiders speculate that Apple will focus on the new iOS 6 and details of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Even though the conference is technically sold out, there are still scholarships available to 150 student developers. The program is open to full- and part-time students who are 13 years of age and older. Kids must provide proof of school enrollment and be paid members of the iOS Developer Program, iOS Developer Enterprise Program or Mac Developer Program, or an iOS Developer University Program Student team member. 

Apple's Q1 Earnings Reflect a Huge Surge in Popularity

The jump to a fast two hours is indicative of Apple's soaring popularity, and it comes on the heels of yesterday's blowout Q1 earnings. For comparison, Google sold out its Google I/O developers conference in just 20 minutes, though Google's event often includes thousands of dollars worth of free hardware for attendees. 

ReadWriteWeb's Dan Frommer illustrated Apple's huge quarter in charts. Its sales have grown 59% year-over-year, making sales its biggest growth statistic. iPhones make up Apple's biggest business, with 35 million shipped during the quarter. Meanwhile, iPads account for 17% of products sold, trailing the iPhone's impressive 58% of sales. With its Q1 earnings alone, Apple could actually buy T-Mobile.