There is no doubt that photographic filters and retouching are one of the most demanded functions and used by users of current smartphones Being able to touch up our snapshots is something that is being used more and more. Instagram is to blame for this, an application with only two years of life that offers a brief but striking selection of filters to modify the aspect of our images and share them with the whole world , giving us the opportunity to follow the creations of other users.Something that has already dazzled millions of people and that managed to attract the attention of the largest social networkof the moment, Facebook
What for users may seem like a simple fashion, is a juicy business for companies. Despite the fact that Instagram opened the ban on the smartphones market, getting theproliferation of other applications and filter tools, this war started on the computers The first battle took place with the competition between Flickr, a space in the cloud of Yahoo wherestore and display photos that could be cropped and slightly adjusted, and Picasa, a similar space run by Google The search engine company decided to go a step further by buying Picnik, a company dedicated to creating tools for photo editing, adding its virtues to Picasa, and later to the social network Google+
Now the war has escalated, and there are more agents at stake, and the numbers are much higher. As we said, Instagram has been the spark of this new stage of the war. After achieving great success on iPhone, where it remained exclusive for over a year , decided to open its doors to the other major platform, Android Since then it has not done more that grow in users exponentially, expanding rapidly. This must have made Mark Zuckerberg salivate, who just days after Instagram launched in Android decided to buy the application for a whopping 1 billion dollars (they have finally been a few million less for his stock market crash).
In this way, the largest social network in the world, Facebook, was made with one of the most important applications of the moment, where the users multiply every day, creating a really attractive market for the business of the , main base of Internet income Instagram has also managed to gain a foothold in the social network Twitter, a medium where you can publish and share your images instantaneously and with great diffusion However , after the disbursement of Facebook, it does not seem profitable for the users of this application to use another social network that is not theirs
Although Kevin Systrom, founder of Instagram, states that 's decision to stop displaying retouched images on Twitter has nothing to do with their purchase by Facebook , it's something that is quite hard to believeIn fact, Twitter must have been suspicious, so they got to work and decided to develop their own filters photographic. Or rather, ask the company Aviary to develop them for them. Thus, the rumors became true just a couple of days ago: Twitter already has the possibility of retouching the images attached to a tweet or message
To all this, Google did not want to sit idly by either. Although its moves have been more subtle, it has also sought to acquire applications that provide its users of touch-up tools Here comes into play Snapseed, a kind of Photoshop for mobile phones that, in the face of the mass of applications and filters went from costing about $5 for iPhone and iPad to be completely free and stand up to the fight that was already going on.And not only that, since a couple of days ago it has been available for Android devices
Without a doubt, a fierce war in which users are the final commodity , where more means better and more money, which is the ultimate goal of all this display of media. However, you can also get good things out of this battle of the filters Now users have of more completely free applications from which to choose or not to modify your images and share them with everyone. Applications that improve with each update to try to get your attention and get them chosen. Although there are also losses. The most obvious is the viewing of Instagram images on Twitter, which can do a lot of damage to the latter.
We must be attentive to the next movements And it is that far from being a fashion, the Photographic filters are a growing trend that represents the growth in the number of users of these platforms and participation longer-lasting and more active on social media Which is why these companies are turning to publishing tools.
