Instagram has reached 1 billion app installs on the Google Play store, Android Police has noticed.
This makes the photo sharing app the fourth Facebook-owned app to reach the milestone, after Facebook itself, WhatsApp and Messenger.
The number does not accurately reflect the number of users, as it counts multiple app installs, but it's still a nice milestone that only a handful of apps have managed to achieve.
A screenshot from Instagram's page on Google's Play Store shows the app has been downloaded more than 1 billion times.
IMAGE: STAN SCHROEDER, MASHABLE
To put it into perspective, consider that Android itself has had 1.4 billion users as of Sept. 2015. Instagram announced in July that it has more than 500 million monthly active users, 300 million of which use the app every day.
The app has experienced a series of quite serious overhauls this year. In May, it got a new logo and a visual redesign that aimed to put more emphasis on the photos and videos than the app itself. In June, Instagram rolled out a new, algorithmic timeline, which shows users posts based on their interest instead of chronologically. And in August, the company launched Stories, a new, Snapchat-like feature that enables users to create temporary slideshows which disappear in a day.
Look around the page. Your internet is now very clean and familiar. Squarespace has made everyone's personal website look like the inside of Monocle magazine, and every app is much the same — and not by accident.
The Windex-ing of the internet has gone so far that "ugly websites" are now a web design trend and not just the majority of your browsing history. We actively accepted this abundance of sans-serif and white space, of course. By choosing Apple or Android, you've agreed to live by the feed, where your only design choice is your profile picture.
Although Instagram, with its rows of tiny boxes and pre-determined filters, is hardly a rebellious place, some of the accounts it hosts offer a much needed respite from #unfiltered nights in the Cinque Terre.
The real world is still plenty ugly, after all. People are still dumping mattresses on the street and a few intrepid ugliness-seekers are willing to take the photo evidence for you to enjoy. That would would be the Instagram account, Mattresses of Melbourne.
Tom Lee, the creator of Instagram account The Australian Ugliness that seeks out architectural oddities (disclosure: Lee is a friend), told Mashable Australia that in many ways, finding ugliness was an easier proposition for him than prettiness.
"From my perspective, I was uncomfortable with the idea of doing something that was beautiful or pretty," he said. "It's a lot harder for me to feel a sense of certainty about the aesthetic judgments associated with the beautiful than with the ugly or the irregular."
So much of the internet is about presenting the picturesque, or failing that, the cute, that pictures of suburban artefacts ranging from the banal to architectural fever dream fill a gap. These bespoke collections of ugliness are also about demonstrating knowingness — an in-joke available to anyone who can click "follow."
"By choosing beautiful things, like sunsets, you run the risk of coming across as naive," Lee added, "where ugliness is the genre of the more aware."
Give your tired eyes a rest, delete those breakfast inspo accounts and cleanse the palate with these horrid Instagram accounts. So ugly, so soothing.
Shit Gardens
Australians hate grass in the front yard, always have.
The Australian Ugliness
Bless those local councils who still bother to beautify a four-lane highway with some yellow splodges.
Inner Northern Delights
Someone made these lawn features. With their hands.
Ugly Melbourne Houses
The sweet little grey bunker you always dreamed of living in.
Previously, we featured 16 apps that'll seriously raise your Instagram game. This time we're target-locking on specific apps that'll give your photos and videos a retro '90s aesthetic to make them stand out from the crowd.
We're so spoiled these days with our fancy 4K and uncanny-valley graphics, but in the early '90s, graphics were limited, and those of us who were lucky enough to have computers at home probably had one from the '80s — which meant even crappier low-res graphics.
BitCam is a simple camera app that mimics the style of old-school computer operating systems like the Classic Mac OS. You get three different grain levels of pixelation (FatBits, Standard and Super-Res). To get color graphics, however, you'll need need to pay $1.99.
Ignore the name, it has almost nothing to do with the app and after installation, it shows up as "Chromatic."
With this app, though, you can either take a photo or edit an existing photo and give it a chromatic stereoscopic 3D effect. You only get controls for adjusting the angle and radius of the effect, but's more than enough to get the retro aesthetic.
The only annoying thing about the app is you have to deal with ads. And there's no way to pay to remove them.
Ahh, the '90s, when scan lines and VHS tape ruled. There are lots of VHS camcorder apps out there — most of them free — and they all do pretty much the same thing.
This one is free and records in a cropped 4:3 aspect ratio (but with pillarboxing) for that extra old-school look. In true '90s fashion, videos have a time and date timestamp in the corner and glitch lines that run across the footage.
To really sell your fake '90s footage, be sure to shake the camera and do big side-to-side pans and swoops to replicate the big, bulky video cameras of a bygone era.
Though the '90s eventually brought us advanced 3D computer graphics, 2D sprites still ruled the gaming world. Game consoles like NES, SNES, Sega Genesis and Commodore 64 (some of which actually came out in the '80s) made sprite-based art commonplace in that decade.
Famicam64 replicates dozens of different game and computer graphics styles from that era, including even the ill-fated Virtua Boy's awful headache inducing red-3D aesthetic.
Why is an app called 1967 in a roundup about reproducing the look of the 1990s? Because the filters reproduce the effect of many of the film filters that I used in the '90s, when film was on its last legs. 1967's is also notable for its simple interface.
The app gives you 10 free filters and all 64 if you pay $1.99, which is pretty damn reasonable.
Instagram is known as a place to post still photos, but the future is video.
Mashable has discovered a new video "Channels" section located within the app's "Explore" section.
An Instagram spokersperson told Mashable "We're always testing new ways to improve the Instagram experience."
The feature was discovered on an Android phone running 6.0.1 Marshmallow. It couldn't be duplicated on an iPhone or another Android phone running the same system.
Normally, when you enter the Explore page, you're brought to a thumbnail view of photos and videos that "you might like." There are certain categories that group together certain genres of posts, but not to the extent seen in the new Channels view.
There's a new "Channels" icon in the upper right.
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
When you tap on the Channels icon, you're brought to this, a menu with 64 different categories:
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
Instagram is likely testing this feature on a small group of users. The company frequently does this for new features like the recently discovered edit drafts option.
For what it's worth, at least one other person has seen it within the last 24 hours:
Not even Iron Man can resist poking fun at Hiddleswift.
After Tom Hiddleston finally decided to join Instagram on Tuesday, his co-star and pal Robert Downey Jr. decided to welcome him with a clever post.
The Avengers actor chose to greet his fellow Marvel co-star by mocking his outrageous "I Heart T.S." tank top, a declaration of Hiddleston's apparently true feelings for girlfriend Taylor Swift.
After Hiddleston shared his very first Instagram — a photograph of himself dressed as Marvel's Loki, captioned, "He's back!" — Downey responded with some good old fashioned fun.
The actor shared a photograph of Hiddleston wearing the infamous tank. He cleverly captioned the blurry shot, "Join me in welcoming the biggest T. Stark fan of them all to Instagram!"
We could not be more grateful that Downey's Iron Man character, Tony Stark, and Taylor Swift share the same initials.
Then I chuckled at what a stupid idea that would be.
Turns out it's not such a stupid idea, seeing as Instagram just copied the crap out of Snapchat.
For Instagram's parent company Facebook (and CEO Mark Zuckerberg), it's the ultimate f*ck you to Snapchat after failing to kill the app several times with its own unsuccessful clones — and failing to outright buy the rival app.
Well, Zuckerberg's having the last laugh now, because his company basically just declared war on Snapchat.
I can just picture Zuckerberg wearing his robe hacker hoodie, sitting in some evil underground lair, finger-tenting Mr. Burns-style, as he watches a wall of screens showing Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel freaking out.
Adding a "Stories" section — even if it's a complete Snapchat derivative — to Instagram is wise, no doubt, since the photo-sharing social network has over 300 million daily active users, which is twice as many as Snapchat's 150 million.
But, I can see right through what's happening.
While Facebook and all the olds who can't figure Snapchat out are celebrating, it's now very apparent to me that Instagram is a trojan horse.
Whatever popular features Facebook wants — and if it fails to gain traction either through its own clone or through an acquisition — it'll use Instagram's large, influential install base to get it.
Instagram is becoming a bloated everything app because the cool kids aren't on Facebook. Facebook is skating to where the eyeballs are, which is Instagram, in order to slay Snapchat.
From this moment on, things will never be the same for Instagram.
Different apps for different content
Instagram is great precisely because it's not Snapchat and Snapchat is great because it'snot Instagram.
The two apps offer different experiences. And I carve out time for both of them because they don't compete.
I go to Instagram to look at beautiful photography. And I go to Snapchat to ghost in on my friends' lives through Snapchat Stories, like some kind of creep looking through a digital peep hole.
On the creation side, it's the same deal:
My Instagram:
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
My Snapchat:
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
Sure, there's occasional overlap, but for the most part I expect to see cruder, spontaneous content vomited onto Snapchat Stories compared to posts shared on Instagram. And that's OK, because the bar for content on Snapchat is miserably low.
I'm not saying there aren't sh*t qual pics — I can't stand all the memes and food pics. OH. MY. GOD. THE FOOD PICS.— on Instagram. But the ratio of garbage to not garbage isn't as high (at least on my curated feed).
Instagram may have had humble lo-fi beginnings trying to emulate the instant film aesthetic of Polaroid, but the app has transformed over the years into a serious digital gallery where tossing a bloody Nashville or Rise or Earlybird filter on top of a pic and calling it a day invites scorn. You just don't do it unless you want to be called a newb. #nofilter for life.
I know many people still use Instagram as a platform to post instantaneous photos and videos. That's great, but the best content is almost never instant. It requires carefully edited and timed postings. (Well, unless you're Justin Bieber and every freakin' selfie you post sends fans into a frenzy.)
What is Instagram anymore?
By cloning Snapchat's Stories, Instagram is now an app trying to please everyone.
People who don't use Snapchat but do use Instagram will be exposed to it. People who can't grasp Snapchat but understand Instagram will be more inclined to learn how to use Instagram Stories just because they'll internalize that it's easier by association, even if it's not. And people who use both Instagram and Snapchat may find themselves starting to favor one over the other, most likely the one where all their friends are on. (Facebook is betting it's on Instagram).
And by trying to appeal to Snapchatters, Instagram will alienate hardcore 'grammers.
What the hell is Instagram anymore is what I'm now wondering. Is it a place I go to to look at people's fine photos? A place to look at silly memes? A place to slide into people's DMs? A place to make Snapchat-like stories that also disappear within 24 hours?
Facebook says its Stories feature further helps people remember moments in their life, but, uh, that's what Facebook is for. And it's become so large with so many features that it's turned people off.
Like I said earlier, I know what I'm getting when I use different social platforms. Now, Instagram is just one big mosh pit of content.
I hate it.
I've been an Instagram user since day one. Yes, I'm talking launch day on Oct. 6, 2010. I've seen it grow from an unknown app to the goliath it is today.
And I've seen it evolve and expand its offerings from just still photos to videos, from just squares to other aspect ratios, from blue and white to a black and white interface.
Contrary to popular belief, I'm open to change when it makes sense. But this one is such a paradigm shift in Instagram's focus that I may just quit this app before it becomes a sh*t sandwich of everything mashed into one.
I don't need two Snapchats. One is enough. And it's already on my phone's main homescreen. Remember how difficult it was to manage a Facebook and a Google+ identity? Facebook eventually won out.
Oh, and you probably already know this, but Instagram is about to become the battery hogging bastard that Snapchat is:
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