Instagram Users Continue Drop, Flickr On Rise. Does It Matter For Music Marketing?
Last week a variety of media outlets noted a drop in Instagram users as measured by AppData that many attributed to the uproar over Instagram's change in terms of service. This week the drop continues while a renewed Flickr is on the rise. What musicians and music marketers using tools like Instagram have to ask themselves is do the number of users for an app matter as much as who you're reaching through that app?
AppData tracks the number of users who connect to apps using Facebook. So they're an approximation of overall user data but a reasonably strong one. Appdata's data is the source of the uproar as initially reported by the New York Post.
Last week's drop of millions of daily users for Instagram, a popular tool for music marketing, was rightly taken as worth watching but open to multiple interpretations. This week's drop, as seen in the chart below, suggest an emerging pattern as Instagram appears to be shedding many millions more of their Daily Active Users.
Instagram's Daily Active Users via AppData
During this period much smaller competitor Hipstamatic saw similar drops while a midsized Flickr fluctuated daily.
Flickr is currently receiving attention due to renewed interest at Yahoo in developing the service. Its recently updated iOS app (including filters) is upping traffic as is a free Flickr Pro offer that ends todays.
So does any of this matter for music marketing?
When comparing Instagram and Flickr on AppData, one sees that Instagram has millions of daily app users while Flickr has tens of thousands. Instagram is much more strongly established as a social media service while Flickr is a favorite of some bloggers and news outlets for photo sourcing due to its use of Creative Commons copyright options.
Though Flickr has been around for awhile, its current renewal makes it ripe for use as a tool for music media projects such as videos designed to gain coverage in music blogs and tech-oriented media outlets.
Depending on your approach to marketing, cases could be made for either service as a focus or for using both based on their strengths. For example, one might continue using Instagram for its huge social userbase while posting pics for casual or official distribution through Flickr.
But ultimately one's choice of where to focus energy and which services to use should be based on their usefulness for reaching a receptive audience and for conducting business.
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/App.net) blogs about music crowdfunding at Crowdfunding For Musicians (@CrowdfundingM). To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
Become the face of the world through Instagram… I’ve never really used the site, but alot of my friends have their concerns. I wish I could tell them not to worry.
This I think is the exact reason why the transfer of traffic. Instagram goes talking about owning your photo so traffic goes down and Flickr offers free pro upgrade so traffic goes up.
But frankly I think both could co-exist. Many Instagram users simulataneously upload Instagram photo on flickr as to share or just for backup. But they do.
Anyways Instagram doesn’t seem like it would go anywhere. There are so many Instagram tools and services, you would be amazed how much the community, developers love Instagram.