What hiatus? Someone just became an instabillionaire.

Blogging is now an old-fashioned word for bitching. But there are several categories of bitching. Meaningful bitching, aimless bitching and bitching bitching. The evil of them all is bitching bitching. It serves no greater human purpose except for pure venting.

And there is no greater way to re-start a blog after a long flatus (hiatus, flatus, hiatus... get it?) other than to bitch about Facebook buying over Instagram for a cool $1 billiongram.

Instagram to the uninitiated, is an iPhone (now Android-user-able) app that allows users to take pictures in pre-set filter effects. The result is a collection of not-at-all-amateurish pictures which can be shared with a worldwide audience. The word Instagram users like to use (and they use it a lot!) to describe their Instagram-pictures is hip/hipster/hipsterrific.

Here, my Instagram hip-example. You can actually make a toilet roll interesting.... with a lazy Instagram pre-set filter:



Now the bitch-talk begins. The effect of buying over an app like Instagram for a nice $1 bil facebook cheque is simply a way of Facebook telling other app-makers: if you want my future, forget my past, if you wanna get me with me, better make it fast; now don't go on wasting my precious online time, get your act together and make your app really really facebook-friendly.

Commentors have been scratching heads as to why FB needed to pay so much for a company that does not generate revenue, and has only a fraction of FB total users (30 million Instagram users versus FB 850 million). So what does FB add by buying Instagram? To rival Google's Pinterest?

This. By paying 1bil for a company of 18 peeps, FB is sending out this nudge $ignal to app-designers: now please choose your preferred social network. FB shall not rest until it has full control of your digital life. Give in to me....

Thanks to you and me, we have made Facebook this powerful beast. With its colossal funds it will write the rule books on how apps should run and how apps should network.

FB becoming king isn't a bad thing, so long as there are other alternative kingdoms we can move to. With billions to spend, I don't think other kingdoms can really match up - we have only villages as alternative. When the ubiquity gets annoyingly intrusive, we shall live in those. But for now, I shall tolerate blue frames, tagging and LIKE buttons. Just don't do that to Instagram interface.


Before you accuse me of forgetting tradition, I haven't:-

KAO BO (n) a female canine animal