I spent quite some time on Flickr, and I'd been feeling there were a lot of photos were uploaded via Instagram app. They are very easy to spot, square, toned, filtered, or framed, sometimes. I began to wonder how many were uploaded via Instagram.

And I got my answer: 0.46% and probably more.

Collecting method

I wrote a Bash script and used it with cron to collect data via API flickr.photos.search for specific machine tag uploaded:by=instagram every 15 minutes.

I don't have Instagram app and have no idea what it can actually do. I have seem a few photos do not have tags, but have 'Via Instagram' noted in photo description, or some I could tell were uploaded via Instagram, but no tags as well. Therefore, I think Instagram provides some options to allow you to disable some indications that can be used to identify the uploader. The number of uploads could be higher.

The script stores the total number of matches and the photo ID as total photos on Flickr in a CSV file. Note that using photo ID as estimation of total Flickr photos is not accurate at all, but I can't find any better way to get the number.

The collecting time range is roughly between 2012-06-23 and 2012-06-30, for detail time range, please view the spreadsheet.

Results

The following chart plots the tagged photos and the total photos:


You can see some irregularities in the chart above, I suspect that's caused by cached time from different Flickr servers, but I didn't confirm it.

and summary:


Conclusion

21 photos uploaded via Instagram app every minute, that's about 0.46% of all newly uploaded photos (4,647 photos) per minute on Flickr.

If calculate the percent of Instagram photos on Flickr using photo ID as total, then the percentage is ~0.16% or 0.17%. The accurate number should be higher, nonetheless, that already tells a lot. Because 0.16% isn't an insignificant number if you consider Instagram has not yet been as 2 years old service, it started in October, 2010 (I found one photo uploaded on 10/24/2010).

There were some questions about the acquisition of Instagram back in April, but just looked at that 0.16% (if not more). It defines not only Instagram's value but also Flickr's, and Flickr is just a website that Instagram supports.

I would even say there would be more uploaded via Instagram, because it's direct and you can add some effects, which is the reason I don't like Instagram photos. People apply too many because it's easy to do it, I hardly see any Instagram photos without filter. A photo looks artistic, doesn't mean it is, by all means, nor do it imply the taker is an artist. Although that's just a personal preference, everyone can do whatever to their things.