In the wake of Facebook’s $1billion Instagram buy earlier in the month, one comparison that did the rounds is that Instagram will be to Facebook like YouTube is to Google.  A stand-alone (ish) network, that is the clear leader in what it does (so for YouTube online video, for Instagram mobile photography).

However, while YouTube may be the 800lb gorilla of video sharing, a few networks have managed to carve out their own roles – on positioning as opposed to numbers.   Vimeo for example, is a fraction the size of YouTube, but a lot of creative industry professionals prefer it for the interface, the community and the quality of content.

Though I don’t think anyone is going to catch Instagram on numbers for now, I similarly believe there is an opportunity for a ‘Vimeo’ to sit alongside Instagram’s ‘YouTube.’   Not everyone has been thrilled by Instagram turning from a 15 million user network at Christmas to a 50 million user one today, for example Apple marketing boss Phil Schiller quit the service citing the changing “signal to noise ratio.” 

So who will benefit?  There are easily a dozen Instagram like networks in existence, and it’s too early for the community to coalesce around one.    From the initial chatter, I believe four possible candidates are Via.me (which welcomes Instagram users with a banner on their site) Streamzoo, EyeEm and Tadaa.

Tadaa – growing by word of mouth

Tadaa is one I’ve seen a number of my own Instagram friends move to, and having played around with it for the past fortnight, I thought it worth doing an overview of it.   This is especially since Tadaa by and large hasn’t been included in the ‘Instagram alternatives‘ type articles published since the Facebook deal.

However, from what I can see 1st hand, Tadaa is a network that has been growing almost totally by word of mouth, without the oxygen of free publicity and I was keen to get some insights from Tadaa founder Niko Schoppmeier

The network and app

Tadaa is run by a team of five from Hamburg, meaning there is a parallel with the early Instagram that for a while also only had five staff.  Right now it is an Apple only app.   Again I had echoes from the early Instagram:  Niko told me Android was a possibility, but they wanted to do it right.

In fact, it looks like an iPad app will see the light of day 1st, something Instagram never got around to.

The basics of the network are similar to Instagram.  You put a photo through third party or the in-app filters, you upload it, you geo-tag it (optional), you share to Facebook and Twitter (again, if you want), and you add a comment.    You then follow other users, see their posts in your stream and have the opportunity to like and comment on their images.

However, there are also a lot of differences.  For starters, the navigation is unlike Instagram’s and (from comments I’ve heard) it isn’t to everyone’s taste.   Secondly, you can’t ‘@’ someone in Tadaa or use hashtags.   Both these are under review and Niko told me hashtags is possibly the number one user request.

On the plus side though, you can repost images and also reply to a post with your own image.     Also the in-app filters are infinitely superior to Instagram’s, tying in with Tadaa’s premium positioning (see below).

Finally, Tadaa has something called ‘Tadaa dollars’, basically a score that measures your likes and influence (like Klout, I personally tend to ignore it).

The numbers

Not surprisingly, Tadaa wouldn’t give away any numbers.  Niko did however mention that the network had seen two recent peak periods.   One, in early March when they released version 4 of the app and got a lot of good press in their native Germany.

Here Nikko let slip that they got 150k new members     The second wave, and this was global and much bigger, came post Facebook / Instagram.   At the time, Tadaa also put up a note saying its servers had briefly been down due to the stampede of sign-ups.

The one impressive number however comes around engagement.  Apparently 20% of users post more than 10 images a day.   Compare that to Twitter, where only 25% of users are even moderately engaged.

What’s the vision, and what is the potential for brands?

When I put the Vimeo analogy to Niko Schoppmeier, he agreed.   Time and time again he emphasised Tadaa’s role as a high-quality network for iphoneography enthusiasts as well as semi-professional photographers.

That I think makes Tadaa interesting for brands if the aim is to generate high level content and to tap into a community of super-engaged users.   Any competition or promotion does however need to factor in the point that standards on Tadaa are high.

Finally, the ‘reply’ function on Tadaa is useful, especially given the lack of hash-tags for the moment.  This means people enter a competition or challenge by replying to a master image.

Tadaa’s future success – the community is key

Niko correctly pointed out that Instagram might also have had five staff members at one point, but that this was only half the story, with the other part being how a community grew up around the network.

That’s something I’ve noticed within Tadaa and it is something that will be key to its success.   The numbers are still relatively small, but as I’ve mentioned, they are engaged.    There are also embryonic user groups and accounts starting up, for example the lndtadaa group now runs a challenge every week.   These groups will potentially serve as the glue that keeps the most committed users there.

As a result, though it’s not made as much noise in the tech press as other Instagram competitors, Tadaa is an interesting player in this space, and one to watch.

(I’m dirktherabbit on Tadaa as well as Instagram, find me there!)

Related articles

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• Tadaa Vs Instagram (littlelindiline.wordpress.com)
• Apple’s Phil Schiller drops Instagram after Android launch, blames ‘signal to noise ratio’ (theverge.com)

Research firm Sysosmos (the people who recently published stats on Twitter ‘power users’) has come out with a study on online video.

However, rather than recycling the old line about how much online video is growing, Syomos looked at the extent to which bloggers use online video.   That’s obviously important for the simple reason that if your viral is going to go anywhere, bloggers will have a great deal to do with it.

Not surprisingly, You Tube leads in terms of bloggers embedding videos into their blogs, with 84% using it.   However, Vimeo is ahead of Daily Motion and Metacafe in second place with 8% of embeds.   Vimeo (which we ourselves use) positions itself as a higher quality (in both senses of the word) video sharing channel and certainly among online influencers it does better than it does among the mass of consumers.

The best days to embed videos?  Tuesdays and Wednesdays.   This ties back to the fact that a lot of bloggers (present company included) will do more during the working week, and also attract more blog traffic, and much less during weekends.   And again, not surprisingly, lunchtimes are peak online video times for blogs.

The US obviously leads in terms of bloggers using online video (32%), though Brazil (6.6%) beats the UK (4,4%) into second place.   Purely anecdotally, I know that a lot of our campaigns have – randomly – been picked up by Brazilian sites without any rhyme or reason why that should be the case.

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