The Apps That Are On A College Kid's Phone: Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat And...Cinemagram?
Last week, Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson wrote a blog post about privacy. He said a number of interesting things in it, like that Facebook copies everything.
He also said this:
"I like to talk to my kids and their friends. Here is a typical college aged woman I know. She uses Twitter, Instagram, Cinemagram, Foursquare, iMessage, and Snapchat. And Facebook too."
None of those are surprising, with one exception.
Cinemagram?
Wilson explains the use cases for most of the others:
" If it is something silly that she wants to share with a friend but would be mortified if it ended up on Facebook, its Snapchat. If it is something she wants out there broadly, it is Twitter. If it is something she wants to share with a wide group of curated friends, it's Instagram. She has a private Instagram account so she controls who follows her there."
But what's the use-case for Cinemagram?
I texted my cousin who has an iPhone and is a sophomore at Tennessee. "Do you and your friends use Cinemagram? i.e. Do you and your friends have it on your phones?"
She replied, "I have no idea what that is."
I tried another college student, a senior at Notre Dame who runs his school's social media accounts. He owns an Android and replied, "Never heard of it."
As for the others Wilson mentioned he said, "I personally only use FB, Twitter. But plenty use Instagram obviously. Not too many Foursquare but I've seen it on occasion." Then he added something surprising. "We all use GroupMe though." He and my cousin both use Snapchat.
So what's up with Cinemagram?
Cinemagram is an interesting, easy way to make animated GIFs on a mobile device. It caught fire in October after raising $8.5 million round led my Menlo Ventures. Then, it was #4 in the App Store, just above Snapchat. But while Snapchat is holding strong at #5, Cinemagram has fallen out of the top 100. Now it doesn't seem to be losing or gaining users.
In October, Cinemagram shot up to 300,000 monthly users, per AppData (which only shows the number of people who log-in to the app through their Facebook accounts):
Today, it's steady at about 300,000 monthly active users and 60,000 daily active users.
That doesn't mean Wilson's go-to college student is a one-off, or that Cinemagram is dead. One great thing about college kids is they're like sheep.
As my cousin wrote in a follow up text, "I'm sure in a couple weeks everyone will have it."
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