Which Photo Apps Or Services Dominated 2014? Facebook Controls Most, With Snapchat Growing Rapidly

The 2014 edition of Mary Meeker's annual Internet Trends Report was published recently, giving insights on specific aspects of the industry through statistics.

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The Verge notes that one section of the full report, which can be found at KPCB and was publishbed at the end of May, details the increase in online photo sharing and the services or apps most widely used for that purpose. Only a handful of these apps or services dominate the market, and the above graph makes it clear that Facebook controls a vast majority of the activity.

The photo-sharing growth itself, which really only began in 2008 with Facebook, has increased dramatically over the past two years, largely due to the rapid adoption of Snapchat and WhatsApp around the world.

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The chart displays the data in terms of the number of photos shared, which skews what you see: Instagram users will post at most a few times each day, while Snapchat and WhatsApp users will constantly send images back and forth in a conversation. Facebook itself is more tame as well as far as individual uploads go, though posting an entire album from vacation or an event would certainly boost the numbers.

If one thing is clear, it's that Facebook's billions of dollars spent on acquiring WhatsApp and Instagram seemed to have certainly helped it corner the market--only Snapchat escapes its grasp among the top services, and it wasn't for lack of trying.

Flickr barely registers, but that too is influenced by the design of the graph--photography enthusiasts and browsers tend not to upload en mass, or at least not many times per day. Facebook has control of the most major services in terms of usage and user base, but it remains to be seen if it has paid off for them financially (or will in the future) given the massive amounts the company invested.