Yesterday Apple announced Instagram as the “iPhone App of the Year” on its iTunes Rewind 2011 list. Instagram topped Angry Birds, Foursquare, Twitter and the likes. Apple calls Instagram, “The year’s definitive photo-sharing app.” The Instagram network is dominating the photo-sharing world with over 14 million users. If this isn’t a sign that photos are the wave of the future I don’t know what is!

Last week, TechCrunch produced a nice piece explaining Why Instagram Is So Popular. This week, we are offering different take on how Instagram became Apple’s “App of the Year.” Hint: Instagram’s success not only has to do with quality, audience, and constraints, but also with network design and media consumption habits.

• Sharability. Its a fact: keeping up with your family, colleagues, and all of your high school and college friends can simply take a large chunk of time out of your week. Whatever your thoughts may be regarding shallow online communication, photo-sharing is a quicker, easier way to interact with the majority of your friends than talking with each of them in person or over the phone.
• Ease-of-Expression. Its a lot easier to take a quick photo or video of you, your friends at the beach, a protest march, or a concert than to explain your personal political views regarding the Libyan Revolution (and often involves a lot less eye-rolling). As we increasingly interact with one another through online images we become better photo and video sharers. Whether or not this is causing us to become worse at writing or vocalizing our thoughts and ideas is up to you. 
• Social Network Design. Social networks are designed to share photos, videos, and …anecdotal wall posts. Just take a look at the info pages of four of your friends’ profiles on Facebook. Everyone seems to love the same music, watch the same movies, and “Like” the same Internet memes. Forget your profile page and your wall, the best avenue for original, “semi-authentic” self-expression is through your personal photo albums and the pictures you’re tagged in by friends. It’s easy to see that photo-sharing is quickly becoming the most popular form of online communication. Simply put, its quicker to share your experiences with hundreds of your friends or followers with the click of a button rather than to pick up the phone or write about it on your Facebook wall.

That’s why Instagram keeps gaining popularity and that’s why Olapic is betting on photos too.