Investigation

Other apps which do appear on the App Store for the term “Instagram” include:

InstaPad – Instagram Gallery for iPad

InstaMatch – The Instagram Game

Instamap – real-time Instagram browser

Instagallery – browse Instagram photos

Note that all these apps feature the word Instagram in the app title which is separate to the app name.

Conversely, PictoBento is listed when searching for “dribbble”. It’s listed alongside:

Balllin – a Dribbble client

Dribbblr

Dribbbits for iPad

Dribbble Flow

Pick ‘n’ Roll

Courtside

Plus two other random apps which appear unrelated to the term “dribbble”. Only one of the above apps includes dribbble in its app title.

Conclusion

Where there is low competition, the keywords can take effect. Where there is high competition, the app title wins out over an app with only keywords.

Changes

I’ve now changed the title of the app to “PictoBento – Instagram, dribbble and PicPlz Gallery”. The app title is descriptive and accurate. It also better informs an App Store user of the purpose of the app. This coincides with a previous decision to change the secondary category of the app from Utilities to Social Networking to better reflect the nature of Instagram, dribbble and PicPlz and the addition of Twitter sharing in PictoBento 1.2.

Next Steps

Review your App Store listing. Optimise your listing to include keywords in the app title as well as the app description. Your competitors are doing this so you need to.

Update: The initial text was rejected because of the amount of keywords used. A further submission was made, which took another week to be reviewed, but was accepted. The title for the app is now “PictoBento – Instagram and dribbble Gallery”. As soon as the app was listed in the App Store, it appeared alongside all other “Instagram” iPad apps. Result!

It’s pretty disheartening when the first review of an app on the App Store is a one star review which then goes on to slate the app in a neat one liner.

Stupid - Bad scrolling!! you can only look at the popular pages and not your own feed!

“Bad scrolling” is a pretty damning comment on an app whose main feature is a smooth scrolling view of a beautiful images in a coverflow.

But it’s even worse that it strikes a chord as being accurate. In testing the latest version which I was about to upload to the App Store I had noticed that scrolling had become slightly erratic. I’d thought it was just an issue with the Simulator.

The Fix

I discovered that on the device, when used in portrait orientation, that the master view menu appeared on a right swipe. A bit of research on Stack Overflow brings up the details of a change introduced by Apple in iOS 5.1 for master table applications using swipe gestures.

This change in behaviour allows the master view menu which would normally be displayed from a toolbar button to be swiped into and out of view. It was the swiping out behaviour that was interrupting the scrolling in the app. This was only when swiping to the right i.e. moving backwards through the coverflow, where most use tends to be swiping forwards. By disabling the master view menu from appearing on swipe, the scrolling has returned to its previous working state. When the master view menu is displayed from the toolbar button it can still be dismissed with a swipe, therefore not completely removing the new behaviour.

Thanks AppAnnie

AppAnnie first alerted me to the review. It’s been really useful as a way to monitor sales and updates. With the additional use of tracking new reviews (and the defects they mention!) it’s proven invaluable.

Tiny Shiny Apps will be proud to release PictoBento 1.2 with sharing via Twitter and a fix for scrolling/swiping.

As proof to its success, it was just announced that Instagram actually has 27 million users.

Its interesting that to continue this phenomenal growth, Instagram has announced a change in approach by partnering with Hipstamtic. They will allow Hipstamatic to post photos directly from their app to the Instagram service. Previously it was only possible to perform a custom action on an image from other camera apps into Instagram using the API and iPhone hooks.

Hipstamatic is by no means a small player in the iPhone camera apps market with a revenue of $10 million last year. This partnership will help both parties.

Its clear that Apple approves of this growing use of their technology for iPhoneography, as both have previously been selected by Apple as iPhone app of the year, Hipstamtic in 2010 and Instagram in 2011.

There will be much interest in which other partners are announced over the coming months.  As part of the Instagram API ecosystem, TinyShinyApps looks forward to the future developments and their integration into PictoBento.

TinyShinyApps is pleased to announce the release of the version 1.1 update to PictoBento.

The iPad app now has added Instagram support and allows you to view and like popular images, view more photos from featured users. Location support has also been added to display a photo’s location.

Extra support for dribbble allows the viewing of Popular, Everyone and Debut images to be extended to view other designs from featured users.

“PictoBento allows you to find photos and designs you love. It’s your daily dose of inspiration. It’s your 5 minute creativity boost.”

Current features include:

• View photos from the Popular feed of Instagram
• Like photos on Instagram
• View photos from popular Instagram users
• View designs from the Popular, Everyone and Debuts feeds of dribbble
• View designs posted by featured dribbble users
• View photos from the Interesting feed of PicPlz
• Save images as favourites

Web Site: http://www.tinyshinyapps.co.uk/about/pictobento/

App Store URL: http://itunes.com/apps/pictobento/

PictoBento is available at a price of £0.69/€0.79/$0.99 for a limited time.

Over 315 million iOS devices sold

585,000 apps in the app store

25 billion apps downloaded

Previous market stats from October 2011 and March 2011.

Since Christmas [2011] the mobile photo network Instagram has gained over ten million users.  This makes Instagram the largest mobile only social network with a global reach. [March 2012]

Instagram Growth

Platform Decisions

Although we’re excited by the growth we’ve seen, we feel that the first step to creating a lasting company is to work with the many talented developers out there in the world. 

Prior to that, such was the demand, there was an unofficial implementation of the API in development.

The API provides access to key aspects of the Instagram service – viewing, liking and commenting. It does not allow the uploading of photos, this must still be done via their app, although there are hooks made available to developers to simplify this.

Instagram has kept its web site stupid, driving people to use the app. This has also allowed other product web sites like INK361, Followgram and Statigram to fill that gap. Each of these web sites have used the API to their advantage, each using a differently angle to provide a unique product.

Thriving Ecosystem

Instagram’s API has become a vital part of the product. Sites like INK361, Followgram and Staticgram are all offering products that Instagram has chosen not to offer. This is all possible because of the API. The ecosystem around Instagram has been helped by limited product offerings from the company themselves. It is the developers on the fringe of the app that are benefitting.

I built PictoBento using the API’s for Instagram, dribbble and PicPlz. All services have grown in popularity since the app development was started. By choosing to live in the ecosystem of popular services, I can give my app a better start in life.

What would you do with the Instagram API? Which other popular API’s could you benefit from?

The app allows you to:

• Find photos you love
• Find designs you love
• Favourite the images you love

PictoBento is “your 5 minute creativity boost” and “your daily dose of inspiration”.

The app has been released at a promotional price of £0.69/€0.79/$0.99 for a limited time.

• Over 250 million iOS devices sold
• More than 500,000 apps in the App Store
• 18 billion apps downloaded

• 100 million iPhones and 15 million iPads sold
• 350,000 apps on the App Store
• Over 10 billion apps downloaded