Did I Just Win the First-Ever Instagram Giveaway? 1:20 PM

Over the past few weeks, I have become obsessed with Instagram - the "fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures."  Part of my fascination with Instagram stems from how quickly the niche social network has grown.  After launching in early October of 2010, Instagram quickly reached 1 million users before the end of the year.

But what makes Instagram so great?  After all, we are already able to share photos through Facebook, Twitter and a whole host of other niche photo apps.  So why Instagram?  Aside from the obvious technology features that make the app a social success (Facebook, Twitter and foursquare integration, photo tagging by hashtag and location, photo news stream, ability to like and comment on photos, etc.), I am convinced that the success behind Instagram is much deeper and lies in the app's ability to make anyone feel like a professional photographer, telling the story of their life through really cool looking photos.  There's only so much you can do artistically with a Facebook photo uploaded from your mobile phone, but Instagram gives you the ability to really tell a story through images alone.  Another component of the app's success (IMHO) lies in the app's simplicity and limited functionality.  Instagram is solely about photos.  No video, no links, no games.  Just photos.  This simplicity is a breath of fresh air from Facebook and other services.

For me, part of the fun of Instagram has also been following news organizations and brands and watching how they tell their stories through pictures alone.  Brands on Instagram include The GRAMMYs, NPR, NBC News, Pepsi, CNN, Starbucks, and SnoopDog.  I was particularly fascinated by a giveaway campaign that The GRAMMYs ran yesterday in which they gave away a free GRAMMY poster to one randomly selected person who liked or commented on any of The GRAMMYs Instagram photos throughout the day.  I didn't care about winning the poster, but I was intrigued about how this brand was using this new platform to drive brand engagement and of course participated.  After doing some research, I am fairly confident that The GRAMMYs are the first brand to run a giveaway through the Instagram platform - a sure sign of things to come.  And yes, as you can see from the photo above, The GRAMMYs notified their followers this morning (via an Instagram photo of course) that yours truly was the winner of the giveaway!

If you haven't downloaded Instagram yet, click here from your iPhone to do so.  Unfortunately, Instagram has yet to come to Android or Blackberry, but I am sure we can expect an Instagram app for those platforms soon.

The New 3M Model: Encore 2012 7:58 AM

In June 2009, I published a piece on SayfieReview.com which garnered much buzz here in Florida, especially as it related to Marco Rubio's insurgent fight against Charlie Crist for the United States Senate.  In the piece, I argued that with the right candidate and the right message, the internet could level the playing field and help reverse the conventional wisdom that you must run a "Traditional 3M" campaign to get elected to office. I argued that the Traditional 3M model was based on big money to launch a campaign, followed by momentum, with the candidate's message being a distant third priority. This model can be diagrammed like this:

MONEY → MOMENTUM → MESSAGE

Using the internet to drive message directly to voters, victory is now possible for candidates who don’t have big money to kick-start their campaigns, by following a “New 3M” model that looks like this:

MESSAGE → MOMENTUM → MONEY

We saw Marco Rubio articulate the New 3M Model time and time again in 2010, and now, it seems Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams is articulating the exact same message in his battle for the United States Senate in 2012.  Hear what Williams had to say in an interview with the Texas Tribune yesterday: