Indonesian Startup Brings Instagram Fun to BlackBerry [INTERVIEW]

We all know how famous Instagram is with millions of users snapping and sharing grungy pictures with it on their iPhones – even in Indonesia. Yet, with most of us smartphone fans here having a Blackberry by our side, we wish it would be ported to RIM’s (NASDAQ:RIMM) OS.

Our wish has sort of come true – perhaps for the second time, as Pikubo tried back in August – with BibbyCam (pictured above), which was made by Grace Tahir and Ronald Komalaputra. Although not officially launched yet, the app has gained some word-of-mouth hype, and we thought it’d be interesting to see what the founders have to say. So, we chatted with the duo via email:

1. What’s the Bibbycam app about, and what inspired you to start/make it?

Bibbycam has 15 filters including lomo, old photo and over-saturated, plus a double filter feature to create your own filter. Users can link their photos to other sites such as Facebook and Twitter, they can comment and ‘bibb’ (or ‘like’) each others’ pictures as well. We created this application because we realized there’s a dearth of photo-filtering and sharing apps for Blackberry users, and as avid photographers and Blackberry freaks, we wanted to do one that can meet that need. We hope this application can also be fun and useful for other Blackberry users out there. We do plan to have it available through the Blackberry App World as well.

2. Instagram is famous for its filter-photo-service, partly because the iPhone has got a great camera. Can you replicate this on a Blackberry?

Obviously we won’t be able to compete or change anything about the hardware, but that’s precisely the reason why we did BibbyCam just for Blackberry. Even though the RIM OS and hardware aren’t as great and versatile as the iPhone’s iOS, and we realise a lot of people and critics have undermined Blackberry. However, there are still a lot of Blackberry users out there and a lot of them want a photo-filter service. The market for iPhone and Android photo apps is amazingly crowded and competitive – we realized this and we did not want to go into that market. We wanted to empower Blackberry users, to give them a choice.

3. Some local social networking apps – such as Menoo and Bouncity – have gotten into trouble getting traction because most Blackberry users in Indonesia are getting the cheapest data plan that includes only Twitter, Facebook and Instant Messaging. How will you overcome this?

We can only overcome it by creating a product that is super great and engaging, so people will want to upgrade their data plan to be able to use BibbyCam. This is why it’s free; BB users can use that extra money instead to upgrade their data plan.

4. It has been launched for a few weeks now; what are the early adopters saying?