It is the season to gaze into crystal balls and squeeze out predictive posts before 2012 closes...
What a year it was for the
world of mobile photography! There are far too many developments to call out,
but it’s safe to say that 2012 was the year mobile photography truly came to prominence.
So what could 2013 hold
for social mobile photography?
1. Flickr will make a
resounding comeback
The long forgotten King
will return from exile and rightfully claim the photographic throne. Flickr
will properly kill it in 2013. With a smart new CEO installed at Yahoo, shiny new app, millions
of fanatical fans and a trusted brand Flickr will be one of the mobile
photography stars next year. Expect to see some knock out features, deeper
social integration and a resurgent community.
2. Instagram will teeter
between implosion and monetisation
With a ruthless Terms of Service update, heavy duty monetisation plans and a scary
increase in spam Instagram will do well to keep the platform stable and
positive next year. No doubt there will be more catalyst moments for the
trailblazing social network, but the hard work is yet to come to maintain a
balance between happy and monetised users.
3. Watch for a small
steady migratory trickle from iphones to android devices
With a relatively damp
iphone 5 launch and stiff handset competition this year, 2013 will see a small
but significant trickle of iphoneographers leave their native habitat. As
Android handsets get more technically brilliant the urge to switch may become
too tempting for some. Expect to see Android photography apps to improve too.
4. Google+ will get even
more serious about photography
With Google’s acquisition
of Snapseed, the
recent launch of G+ communities and the ongoing integration of Google+ across
all products Google will continue to make serious overtures to the photography
community. They seem to think if they seduce the image makers perhaps the rest
might follow? Expect to see more growth and a steady stream of enhancements.
5. More camera brands will
develop owned social platforms
The launch of Canon's
experimental Project 1709 as a
social image management tool perhaps heralds a period of innovation for
manufacturing imaging brands looking to cater to emerging social customers.
With more users taking more photos than ever before social image management
will become a tedious, but necessary consideration for those users wanting to
archive their visual social graph.
6. New photo sharing and
discovery apps will challenge Instagram
Watch out for the young
pretenders next year. Leading the charge will be EyeEm. With 1m downloads, 30% month on month growth,
the backing of an attractive Berlin funding scene and a growing passionate
community EyeEm will have a good 2013. Also check out Starmatic a beautiful reimagination of photography.
7. Publishers will
increase their coverage of mobile photography
With the recent launches
of Shootermag and Mobile Connect the media coverage of this niche and growing
category will continue to flourish as audience and advertiser interest peaks.
Mobile photographers will also begin to look for less technical tips and more
creative inspiration in 2013 as the discipline matures.
8. Twitter will innovate
around mobile photography and citizen journalism
In the year where Twitter was wrong during Hurricane Sandy and Obama Hug became
the world’s most tweeted photo the convergence of citizen journalism and mobile
photography has never looked so interesting. The very public divorce between
Instagram and Twitter and their release of an enhanced app signals Twitter’s
ambition to further shape the way its users use images on the platform. Expect
to see improved verification services and better surfacing of images instream.
9. More brands will
capitalise on the appeal of social mobile photography
There has been no shortage
of cookie cutter Instacampaigns by brands testing the power of the visual social web in
2012. Some successful and some fails. But visual brand storytelling is hard to
execute, especially for those brands who have no characters, plot or story!
Expect to see more mobile photographers enlisted by brands to embellish brand
narratives.
10. Mobile photography
will become a real business
There is
money in them hills! Expect more vendors like Foap and Scoopshot to develop and grow their services to cater to
both demand and supply ends of the market. For the committed mobile
photographer there are opportunities to get rewarded in 2013.
2013 is going to be a
great year for mobile photographers everywhere!
