Is the Flashes app the Ultimate Instagram Killer?

when it comes to marketing on social media for your photography business you need to be posting where your clients are in the past week a couple of new social media photo apps have been launched to a lot of fanfare one is called flashes which runs on the at protocol the at protocol the same back end as blue sky and it is racked up about 50,000 uh subscribers the other one is called photo it's also racked up about 50,000 users and it's been receiving a lot of fanfare on threads met as alternative to the social media micro blogging platform formerly known as Twitter now I've posted about Instagram Alternatives in the past remember Vero I made a whole video about that app and why I think it's a complete waste of your time as a professional photographer engaged in the marketing of your professional photography business in this video I'm going to be talking about an app called flashes and other apps like it such as pixel fed pink sky gray sky and helping you to understand the decentralized networks that they run in my next video I'll be discussing the photo app and why I think it has the potential to be the Instagram alternative that everyone has been waiting for but for now let's talk about flashes my name is Kevin Patrick Robbins but everyone just calls me kpr I'm a corporate and Commercial photographer in the Toronto area and this is Studio Builder a YouTube channel where I help professional photographers like yourself develop their business now before I get into why I think flashes might not be it I need to explain how the flashes app works what it means to be a decentralized social media app and why I think decentralized apps are probably just another waste of your time and what the hell the fediverse is and how that even works flashes is an Instagram alternative that runs on a decentralized social media platform known as the at protocol the at protocol and while flashes is getting a lot of media attention right now because it runs on the at protocol there are a number of other Instagram alts such as pixel fed which runs on a completely different decentralized platform known as the fediverse and pink sky which I believe also runs on the at protocol now the at protocol the at protocol whatever you want to call it that's a network it was created by Twitter co-founder Jack dorsy and his team it's newer and designed specifically for social media apps currently it mostly has uh twitter-like apps such as blue sky and photo sharing apps such as flashes the fediverse on the other hand is also a decentralized Network that uses something called activity pup and it includes apps like Mastadon and pixel fed and the fediverse has been around a much longer and collects many many different types of apps it has twitter- like apps Instagram like apps YouTube Alternatives blogging platforms Reddit like forums Facebook like social networks and even you book review sites both the app protocol and the fediverse are decentralized networks which means they are not controlled by one big company such as meta or X and instead they allow many independent servers to connect together apps on the same decentralized network can connect with each other but they can't connect with other decentralized networks so for example if you post images to a fediverse app like Mastadon you can also see those images in pixel fed the apps are pulling all the same data from the same network so they can effectively talk to each other so for example a person using pixel fed can comment on images that were posted to Mastadon in pixel fed without opening the other apps or any other app on the same Network so when you leave a comment on Pixel fed it also shows up as a comment in every other app that uses the same network right it's pretty cool but it can get messy very fast for example if you follow a photographer on flashes who posts a lot of memes on Blue Sky the app can't tell the difference between photos and memes since both are just image files now it gets worse even though the at protocol and the fediverse are both decentralized networks the two networks are completely separate from each other and they do not connect they don't talk to each other content on the app protocol stays on the app protocol and content on the fediverse stays on the fediverse if your friends use flashes they can't see content from Pixel fed if your friends use pixel fed they can't see content you post to Blue Sky you would need to use apps on both networks to connect with everyone so even though the posts on the network can be viewed liked and commented across multiple apps on the same network you would still have to cultivate an audience and a following on each individual Network so suddenly what you thought was going to save you a lot of time and headaches is actually it's going to eat up a ton more of your time and cause even more headaches because you have to keep track of which apps which followings and which apps are on which network as an app flashes is literally just a clone of Instagram it looks like Instagram it functions like Instagram it's essentially just an Instagram skin on the at protocol network with all the same problems of Instagram itself if you're a commercial photographer and you have already culted a following of the right people on Instagram it doesn't make sense for you to spend countless hours trying to get the same people to follow you on a new app that looks pretty much exactly like the one that they already follow you on especially when you're just going to post the same photos on the same days with the same captions to all the different apps and especially since you don't even know if they're using these new apps or which new apps they're using or which decentralized Network that they're choosing to be on I can't see myself investing time in multiple apps when I can't guarantee that my potential clients are going to see my work from a business perspective I cannot recommend investing your time into even more social media platforms where the only potential benefit is an ego stroke but what you do with your time is ultimately up to you if you want to use these apps for fun have at it if the metric you care about is how many random people gave you a hard emoji on a photo or how many followers that you can amass that's fine just don't kid yourself into thinking that more followers equals more hired work it doesn't followers and hard emojis don't pay the bills getting in front of the right people at the right time does that's why for me as a professional photographer I think the photo app is the right social media app for professional photographers and I'm going to get into that in the next video as for getting in front of the right people you need to start a mailing list and you need to improve the SEO on your website I have a fantastic ebook I just published called the ultimate SEO guide for photographers you can get yours it's inexpensive uh you can get it on my website I'm going to post a link in the comments below let me know if you're on flashes and and what you think of it so far