Brad Eshbach

Coming Disruptions

Posted by Brad Eshbach | April 27, 2012

We live in an amazing time. A time when a photography app with 13 employees is worth a cool $1 Billion. A moment when a failing gaming startup can be saved (to the tune of $200 Million) by their digital clone of a classic board game. While indicative of current bubble/not-a-bubble arguments going on in every VC boardroom on earth, these are simply stories. Blog worthy deals that make for great headlines. These are the flashy tales most admired and what draws the attention of the masses. But, lets zoom out and think about the larger trend going on here: We are witnessing technology chip away at industries, norms and assumptions that have been in place for so long most people fail to notice just how broken they are.

This is a time for connecting the dots. A time when teams are building tools that threaten decades old businesses and centuries old institutions. These digital tools of today are being bootstrapped in dorm rooms and conceived on whiteboards spread throughout the Valley and the Alley and the Loop. They are hustling to dismantle the business models of the past and fix problems that have been bugging our collective consciousness for far too long.

That’s the nature of disruption.

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Instagram: Why It’s Hip To Be Square

Posted by Brad Eshbach | March 13, 2012
The hockey stick growth and increasingly avid fan base of photo sharing app Instagram surprised a few. And, with this week came an announcement that Android users will soon be able to join the vintage-y photo movement, it is clear that 2012 will be Instagram’s year.
So what make Instagram different? They are a bunch of squares.
Instagram is one of the few photo-sharing apps out there that forces images to be square. This seemingly minor constraint has had some huge implications on how and what the community shares.  It forces user to consciously choose the focus of each frame. That is important for an app that is consumed exclusively on tiny screens.
Every photo being the same ratio also makes the experience of scrolling through your stream more uniform and engrossing. No sudden and ridiculously long infographs popping up in your stream. A problem that has always bugged me about Pinterest.
Square images are also much easier to design around allowing Instagram to keeps its minimal interface.
Instagrams squares only policy didn’t just happen. It was a conscious decision. Co Founder Kevin Systrom explains:
“We realized that if we were going to do photos, that we’d have to be different and stand out. Square photos displayed really well in a feed format and frankly we just liked the aspect ratio better.”
We are seeing more and more of the classic constraints and standards of photography (and other analog art forms) slowly fade away as digital takes over. When was the last time you actually worried about a photos size or aspect ration? Do I want this in a 4×6 or a 5×7 or a 8×10? Who cares, just crop that thing and post it.

Instasquares

The hockey stick growth and increasingly avid fan base of photo sharing app Instagram surprised a few, until they used it. This week came the announcement that Android users will soon be able to join in on all the vintage-y photo fun. All 300+ million of them! It’s clear that 2012 will be Instagram’s year.

So what makes Instagram different? I think some of it has to do with them being a bunch of squares.

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Filtering The Noise: Three Apps You Shouldn’t Miss

Posted by Brad Eshbach | February 23, 2012

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Next week one lucky Apple fan will download the 25 billionth app from the App Store. Numbers on that scale are usually reserved to GDP figures rather than Angry Birds. With well over half a million apps available it can be hard to filter out the noise and find people building the good stuff. The stuff you wish you had thought of first. Where are the apps that solve problems, disrupt conventions or are just too addicting to put down?

Here are three that have us excited:

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