Doing One Thing and Doing It Right: How EyeEm Is The New Instagram

If there is one takeaway from the insatiable growth of Instagram, SnapChat and Pinterest, it is that there is a lot of potential in photo-sharing. Along with photo-filter options, it's a short yet effective way to communicate a message.

Since Zuckerberg decided to add video to Instagram there is a lot of debate about whether adding more services onto a platform is indeed adding more value. It should be no surprise that the owner of Facebook has taken this route, after his platform has adopted more widgets than Angelina Jolie has foreign family members, but what could he have done to improve Instagram instead of expand it's services? Better filters? Different interface? It's no secret that Instagram is a huge point of contention within the Facebook decisionmakers as since the purchase of Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion, they have done very little to change it or make a profit off of it. It's almost as if they don't understand it. So what do they do? Attempt to appease users while making a stake against Apple's Vine by adding the rising popular service of video.

The issue with this is that Instagram users are not inherently Vine/video users. Video has sound, takes a bit more time to put together and doesn't make our selfies look beautiful in sepia tone. But there is one app that DOES get it.

Behold, EyeEm.

EyeEm not only has better, new and improved filter options but it has improved the user experience so changes in filters and frames are in the inherent swipe of your finger across the image. EyeEm also crops in shapes other than box and puts images together in unique montages across individual's profiles.

The truly revolutionary facet however, is the tagging. Upon posting you are giving an action and a place that uses geo-targeting. The application then guesses upon your location as to what you are doing.

An example is that I was in Edinbergh this weekend taking pictures outside of a cathedral. It then tagged the cathedral I didn't even know the name of yet along with that I was praying. While that wasn't correct, the accuracy of not just predicting the location correctly but a closely corresponding action was impressive. Another example was later that weekend I was in Newcastle taking pictures whilst drinking with friends. I didn't have time to post so I just did them all the next morning on EyeEm. The app used the iPhone's geo-location to remember where they were taken and did the same predictive tags of "Out for drinks," "Dancing," or "Dinner" with each corresponding bar or restaurant by name.

It gets better. Upon using each tag a drop-down function also lets you know which tags are trending and how many pictures are tagged under those categories - a function that could be insanely beneficial for all users across all platforms. And praise Jesus, there is no need for hash signs! EyeEm uses keywords and even spaces for tags so we can do away with the obnoxious in-text, one word translating business of #omgImsosickofthis.

While EyeEm, like Instagram, still hasn't figured out how to pick up a decent profit off its services - it has done loads to improve a service many have left alone, assumably with the UX perfected (or at least 'good enough'). Thankfully, that was not the case for EyeEm and time will tell if it's the case for 100 million Instagrammers.