Instagram and Hipstamatic form photo-sharing partnership


21 Mar 2012

The Instagram app

Instagram is joining forces with fellow photo-filtering and photo-sharing app Hipstamatic to open up photo sharing in Instagram.

Hipstamatic, which as 4m users, has experienced a shift in its user base toward Instagram, Hipstamatic co-founder and CEO Lucas Buick told Fast Company.

“We’ve never been a social networking company, but we clearly benefit from social networks. So this will be the first app outside of Instagram that lets you into their network. That’s pretty cool for us,” Buick said.

Instagram, which launched two years ago, amassed a total of 27m users just last week, and this partnership seems to solidify an intent to remain tops in the mobile photo sharing space.

Under the partnership, Hipstamatic users will have the option to share photos to Instagram, along with other social networks. Users will be able to add a filter and other effects as usual from the app, and when the photo appears on Instagram it will carry a “Taken with Hipstamatic” attribution.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom told Fast Company that users have already been using Hipstamatic to edit photos before they uploading them to Instagram, so he just wanted to simplify that process.